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Search-Light 

Letters 



BY 



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^^j)bert Grant 



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New York 
Charles Scribner^s Sons 



MDCCCXCIX 







-41 798 

Copyright., 1 899, by Charles Scrihner's Sons 



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SECOND COPY, 



Contents 

H 

To A Young Man or Woman in Search of 
the Ideal 
Letter I i 

Letter II 15 

Letter III 32 

Letter IV 45 

IF 

To A Mo'dern Woman with Social Ambitions 



Letter I 










59 


Letter II 










72 


Letter III 










89 


Letter IV 






IF 




105 


To A Young 


Man 


wishing 


to be an 


American 


Letter I 










125 


Letter II 










135 


Letter III 










152 


Letter IV 






f 




169 




To A Political 


Optimist 




Letter I 










173 


Letter II 










191 


Letter III 










214 



To A Young Man or Woman 
in Search of the Ideal, I. 

^o^o^O^^ SHALL assume certain things 
^^ T ^fe ^^ begin with. If a young man, 
^ I ^ th^^ ^^ dividing-line between 
^v ^iv mine and thine is so clearly de- 

^p^p^p^lp fined to your own consciousness 
that you are never tempted to cross it. For in- ^ J 
stance, that it is your invariable pradtice to keep 
the funds of others in a separate bank-account 
from the money which belongs to you, and not 
to mix them. That you will not lie to escape 
the consequences of your own or others' adtions. 
That you are not afraid to stand up and be shot 
at if necessary. That you do not use your knife 
to carry food to your mouth; say "How?" for 
"What?" or hold the young lady whom you 
are courting or to whom you are engaged by 
the crook of her elbow and shove her along the 
street as though she were a perambulator. If a 
young woman, that you are so pure in thought 
that you do not feel obliged to read diseased fic- 
tion in order to enlighten yourself as to what is 
immorality. That you do not bear false witness 
against your neighbor by telling every unplea- 

[ ■ ] 



To a Young Man or JVoman 

sant story you hear to the next person you 
meet. That you do not repeat to an acquain- 
tance, on the plea of duty, the disagreeable re- 
marks or criticisms which others have made to 
you regarding her. That you try to be unseljfish, 
sympathetic, and amiable in spite of everything. 
That you neither chew gum nor use pigments. 
And that you do not treat young men as demi- 
gods, before whom you must abase yourself in 
order to be exalted. 

I take it for granted that you have reached 
the moral and social plane which this assump- 
tion implies. Manners are, indeed, a secondary 
consideration as compared with ethics. A man 
who eats with his knife may, nevertheless, be 
a hero. And yet, it is not always easy to fix 
where manners and ethics begin. Many a fin- 
ished young woman who stealthily heightens 
the hue of her complexion and blackens her 
eyebrows with paint probably regards the girl 
who chews gum with superior scorn. Yet tradi- 
tion associates paint rather than gum with the 
scarlet woman. To avoid introducing the subtle- 
ties of discussion where all is so clear, it is 
simpler to exclude the use of either as a pos- 
sible charaderistic of fine womanhood. The 



in Search of the Ideal 

homely adage that you cannot make a silk 
purse out of a sow's ear is full of meaning for 
democracy. Manners must go hand in hand 
with morals, or charad:er will show no more 
lustre than the uncut and unpolished diamond, 
whose latent brilliancy is marred by uncouth- 
ness, so that it may readily be mistaken for a 
vulgar stone. 

I assume, then, that you possess honesty, \ 
purity, and courage, the intention to be unsel- 
fish and sympathetic, and an appreciation of 
the stigma of vulgarity. If you are seeking the 
ideal, you will try to be, in the first place, an 
uncommon person. A common person is one 
who is content to be just like every one else in 
his or her own walk of life. The laws on our 
Statute-books are made for the benefit of com- 
mon people; that is to say, they are tempered 
to the necessities of the weak and erring. If 
you stop short there you will keep out of jail, 
but you will be a very ordinary member of so- 
ciety. This sounds trite, but the application of 
the principle involved is progressive. It is easy 
to be ordinary in the higher walks of civiliza- 
tion and yet pass for a rather superior person. 
It is only necessary to be content to "do as 

[3] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

every one else does," and accept the bare limit 
of the social code under which you live as the 
guide of condud. 

\Note. — I am reminded here by my wife, Jose- 
phine, that, though the statute-laws are broken 
by few of our friends, there is one law which 
women who claim to be highly civilized and ex- 
ceedingly superior are constantly breaking — 
the statute which forbids them to smuggle.] 

\ Scene : An Ocean Steam-ship. 'Two sea-chairs side 
by side. 

\ Dramatis Persona : A Refined and Gifted In- 
structress of Youth on the home passage from a 
summer s vacation abroad^ and your Philosopher. 
A perfect sea and sky., which beget confidences. 

Refined and Gifted Instructress of Youth. It 's 
rather a bother to have friends ask you to bring 
in things. 

The Philosopher. I always say "Certainly; but 
I shall be obliged to declare them." That ends it. 

Refined and Gifted. My friends wouldn't like 
that at all. It would offend them. You mustn't 
tell, but I have as commissions a dress, two 
packages of gloves, and a large French doll, in 
my trunk. 

[4] 



in Search of the Ideal 

The Philosopher. Yet you will be obliged to 
sign a paper that you have nothing dutiable and 
that everything you have is yours. 

Refined and Gifted. If I were to declare the 
things, the duties would all have to come out 
of my own pocket. I should n't have the face 
to colledl it from my friends. 

'The Philosopher. They expe6l you to fib, of 
course. You prefer, then, to cheat the Govern- 
ment rather than disappoint persons who made 
use of you in order to accomplish that very 
thing ? 

Refined and Gifted. You don't put it nicely 
at all, Mr. Philosopher. Besides, the things are 
mine. I paid for them with my own money; 
and, until I am paid back, the things belong 
to me. There, now, why shouldn't I sign the 
paper ? 

The Philosopher. A shallow sophistry. A mer- 
chant who a6ted on that theory would be sent 
to jail. Will a refined and gifted instructress of 
youth, whose mission in life it is to lead the 
young in the paths of virtue, evade the law by 
a subterfuge ? 

Refined and Gifted. It 's an odious law. My 
family all believe in free trade. 

[J] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

'The Philosopher. Very possibly. But it is the 
law. 

Refined and Gifted (after a pause). I don't 
care. If I declare the things they would never 
forgive me, and I can't afford to pay charges 
on their things myself. I 've only just enough 
money to get home, anyway. Perhaps no one 
will ask me to sign it. By the way, how much 
ought I to give the man if he passes every- 
thing nicely ? 

The Philosopher. Nothing. That would be bri- 
bery. 

Refined and Gifted. Why, I thought all men 
did that. 

The Philosopher. Chiefly women who try to 
smuggle. (Silence of five minutes.) 

Refined and Gifted. I don't care. I shall sign 
it. 

And she did. 

Those whose office it is to utter the last word 
over the dead rarely yield to the temptation to 
raise the mantle of charity and show the man or 
woman in all his or her imperfections. Society 
prefers to err on the side of mercy and forbear- 
ance, and to consign dust to dust with beautiful 
[6] 



in Search of the Ideal 

generalizations of hope and congratulation, even 
though the subject of the obsequies be a widely 
known sinner. However fitting it may be to ig- 
nore the truth in the presence of death, there 
can be no greater peril for one in your predica- 
ment than to cherish the easy-going do6lrine that 
you are willing to take your chance with the rest 
of the world. The democratic proposition that 
every one is as good as his neighbor is readily 
amended so as to read that, if you are as good 
as your neighbor, everybody ought to be satis- 
fied. A philosopher has a right to take liberties 
with the dead which a clergyman must deny 
himself. "Died at his late residence on the 5th 
inst., Solomon Grundy, in the sixty-seventh year 
of his age. Friends are kindly requested not to 
send flowers." Perhaps you saw it ? Very likely 
you knew him. If so, you may have attended 
the funeral and heard read over his bier the 
beautiful words, "I heard a voice from Heaven 
which said, write Blessed are the dead who die 
in the Lord," and the hymn, which the family 
had requested, "Nearer, my God, to Thee." 
The officiating clergyman was not to blame. 
Solomon Grundy had worshipped at his church 
with regularity for twenty years, and had been 

[7] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

a fairly generous contributor to foreign and do- 
mestic missions, in spite of the fa6l that he had 
the reputation down-town of being close as the 
bark of a tree. The obituary notices in the news- 
papers referred to him as "a leading merchant" 
and "a gentleman of the old school." No won- 
der that the Rev. Peter Tyson, who is a brave 
man and has been known to rear on occasions, 
felt that he could let himself go without injury 
to his conscience. Besides, even so discriminat- 
ing a person as your Philosopher saw fit to at- 
tend the funeral, and remembering that the old 
gentleman had given him a wedding present, 
would probably have ordered a wreath but for 
the wishes of the family. And yet the fads of 
Solomon Grundy's life, when examined in a 
philosophic spirit, serve chiefly to point a moral 
for one who is in search of the ideal. Read the 
itinerary of his earthly pilgrimage and judge for 
yourself: 

Infancy (first six years). — No reliable data 
except a cherubic miniature, and the family tra- 
dition that he once threw into the fire a neck- 
lace belonging to his grandmother. People who 
know all about such matters will tell you that 
during these first six years the foundations of 

[8] 



in Search of the Ideal 

charadter are laid. The miniature was always 
said to bear a striking resemblance to his ma- 
ternal grandfather, who was a man of — nay, 
nay, this will never do. Those same people to 
whom I have just referred will tell you that we 
inherit everything we are, and, if I proceed on 
that theory, we are done with Solomon Grundy 
as soon as he was born. Decidedly a young man 
or woman in search of the ideal cannot afford 
to palm off on ancestors the responsibility for 
his or her own condudl. 

Boyhood (six to sixteen). — So-called highly 
respedable surroundings and good educational 
advantages. Here we are brought face to face 
again with those same persons whom I have 
already instanced. 'They will assure you that 
Solomon's father and mother and his "environ- 
ment" were the responsible agents during this 
period, and that whatever Solomon did not in- 
herit or have settled for him before his sixth 
year was settled for him by them without the 
knowledge of said Solomon. This is rather dis- 
couraging as a study of Solomon as a conscious, 
adive ego^ but it affords you an opportunity, if 
you are not in search of the ideal, to make your 
parents and that comfortable phrase your "en- 

[9] 



To a Young Man or Wo^nan 

vironment" bear the burden of all your short- 
comings until you are sixteen, and serve as an 
excuse for your shortcomings in the future. 

Youth (sixteen to twenty-one). — Now we at 
least make progress. Solomon enters college. 
Gets one or two conditions, but works them 
off and stands ered:. High spirits and corre- 
sponding consequences. Becomes popular and 
idle. Subscribes to the faith that the objed; of 
going to college is to study human nature, and 
is fascinated by his own acumen. Sudden revul- 
sion at beginning of senior year. The aims and 
responsibilities of life unfold themselves in ab- 
sorbing panorama, and his soul is full of high 
resolve. The world is his oyster. Studies hard 
for six months and graduates somewhat higher 
than had been anticipated. (Curtain descends to 
inspiring music.) Solomon stands on the thresh- 
old of life the image of virile youth, shading his 
brow and looking at the promised land. 

Early Manhood (twenty-one to thirty). — Sol- 
omon decides to go into business. Reasons 
chiefly pecuniary. No special aptitude for any- 
thing else. Is sent abroad to study more human 
nature, acquire breadth of view and learn French. 
Does so in Paris. Returns with some of his high 

[ -o] 



in Search of the Ideal 

resolve tarnished, and with only a smattering 
of the language in question. Goes into the em- 
ploy of a wholesale dry-goods merchant, and 
begins at the lowest round of the ladder. Works 
hard and absorbedly. Very little leisure. Devotes 
what he has to social diversion. Develops a 
pleasing talent for private theatricals, in the 
exercise of which falls in love with a pretty but 
impecunious young woman. (Slow and senti- 
mental music.) Yearns to marry, but is advised 
by elderly business friends that he cannot af- 
ford it. Dejedied winter in bachelor apartments. 
Takes up with Schopenhauer. Spirits slightly 
restored by first rise on ladder. Eschews society 
and private theatricals. Forms relations, which 
recall Paris, with sympathetic, nomadic young 
person. Gets another rise on the ladder, and is 
spoken of among his contemporaries as doing 
well. 

Manhood (thirty-one to forty ). — Works stead- 
ily and makes several fortunate investments. 
Joins one or two clubs, and gains eight pounds 
in weight. Grows side-whiskers or a goatee. Gets 
another rise, and the following year is taken into 
the firm. Complains of dyspepsia, and at advice 
of physician buys saddle-horse. Contributes fifty 

[ " ] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

dollars to charity, joins a book-club and attends 
two political caucuses. Thinks of taking an ac- 
tive interest in politics, but is advised by elderly 
business friends that it would interfere with his 
business prospefts. Owing to the death of a 
member of the firm, becomes second in com- 
mand. Thinks of changing bachelor rooms and 
wonders why he shouldn't marry instead. Goes 
into society a little and looks about. Gains five 
extra pounds and makes more fortunate invest- 
ments. Picks out good-looking, sensible girl 
eight years younger than himself, with a tidy 
property in her own right. Is conscious of being 
enraptured in her presence, and deems himself 
very much in love. (Orchestra plays waltz by 
Strauss.) Offers himself and is accepted. Burns 
everything in his bachelor rooms and sells out 
all his speculative investments. Regrets to ob- 
serve that he is growing bald. Impressive cere- 
mony and large wedding-cake. 

Manhood — Middle Age (forty to fifty-five ) . — 
Conservative attitude toward domestic expenses. 
Works hard from what he calls "new incen- 
tive." Delights in the peacefulness of the do- 
mestic hearth. Blissful mental condition. (Reli- 
gious music.) Buys pew in Rev. Peter Tyson's 

[ lO 



in Search of the Ideal 

church. Buys baby-wagon. Increasing profits in 
dry-goods business. Almost bald. Gives two hun- 
dred dollars to foreign missions. Is proud of 
his wife's appearance and entertains in moder- 
ation. Becomes head of firm. Buys gold-headed 
cane and gains five more pounds. Goes to Eu- 
rope for six months, with his wife, and conduds 
himself with propriety, visiting cathedrals and 
historical monuments. Shows her Paris. Foresees 
financial complications and turns ship accord- 
ingly. Increasing family expenses and depress- 
ing conditions in dry-goods trade. Completely 
bald. First attack of gout. Absorbed in busi- 
ness and in real-estate investments. On return 
of commercial prosperity, reaps the reward of 
foresight and sagacity. Is chosen diredor of 
two railroads and a trust company. Is ele6led 
president of his club. Gives five hundred dollars 
to domestic missions. Buys new house and a 
barouche for his wife. Gives large evening en- 
tertainment. Second attack of gout. Goes to 
Carlsbad for treatment. (Toccata by Galuppi.) 
Old Age — (fifty-five to sixty-seven). — Ad- 
dresses Christian association on " How to Suc- 
ceed in Life." Is appointed trustee of a hos- 
pital and an art museum. Votes conservatively 

[ '3] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

on every question. Is referred to in newspapers 
as "Hon. Solomon Grundy." Slight attack of 
paralysis. Becomes somewhat venerable in ap- 
pearance. Deplores degeneracy of modern ideas. 
Retires from adive business. More venerable 
in appearance. Second attack of paralysis and 
death. 

And that was the end of Solomon Grundy. 
A highly respeftable representative of a second- 
class man. The term suggests an idea. We have 
here no first, second, and third class railway 
carriages, as are found in England and other 
countries. But it would be interesting, from a 
philosophical point of view, to invent such a 
train for the occasion, and bestow our friends 
and acquaintances, and, indeed, society at large, 
according to their qualifications. You, of course, 
are desirous to know who are the persons en- 
titled to travel first-class, in order that you may 
be introduced to them and avoid intimacy with 
the others, so far as is consistent with Christian 
charity and the mutual obligations of social be- 
ings. But let me first dip my pen in the ink 
again. 



[ h] 



To A Young Man or Woman 
in Search of the Ideal. II. 

^^^BRACADABRA. Presto! Behold 

#* ^to the train. The gates are opened and 
<7to rfo ^to ^^ people press in. There will not 
^§?*^§r ^^ be much trouble with the third-class 
passengers. See how they take their proper 
places of their own accord. Some of them de- 
serve to ride second-class quite as much as many 
who will be affronted at not being allowed to go 
first-class. Do you see that man ? He is a com- 
mercial traveller, or drummer, and, naturally, 
early on the ground. He does n't hesitate or 
examine his ticket, but gets diredly into a sec- 
ond-class smoking-car, settles himself, and puts 
on a silk cap. He knows that it is useless to ask 
for a first-class seat, and he is going to make the 
best of it (which is good philosophy). Very likely 
if you were sitting next to him he would utter 
some such cheery remark as, "It will be all the 
same a hundred years hence," and tell you a pat 
story to illustrate the situation. Did you happen 
to notice, though, the longing look he cast at 
the first-class coaches as he went by ? I feel sure 
that down in his heart he is ready to admit that 

[ 15] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

there are such things as ideals, after all, and he 
is making resolutions as to what he would do 
if he could live his life over again. 

Did you notice that stout, fashionably dressed 
man who stopped and looked at me with a 
grin ? He was trying it on, so to speak. He 
knew just as well as Tom Johnson, the drum- 
mer, that he had no right to travel first-class, 
but he thought I might admit him on the 
score of social prestige. He is one of the kind- 
est-hearted of fellows — just the man to whom 
a friend would apply in a tight place, and I 
rather think he would be apt to help an enemy, 
unless it happened that something he had eaten 
for supper the night before had disagreed with 
him. He has the digestion of an ostrich, and 
he needs it, for his skin is full of oil, and whis- 
key, and tortured goose-liver, and canvas-back 
ducks, and pepper-sauce, and ripe Camembert 
cheese, and truffles, and Burgundy, and many 
other rich and kindred delicacies. He could 
tell four different vintages of champagne apart 
with his eyes shut, and he has honor at his 
club on account of it. His name is Howard 
Vincent. An illustrious-sounding name, is n't 
it ? He inherits gout from both sides of the 
[ '6] 



in Search of the Ideal 

family. He does not know Tom Johnson, the 
drummer. They have moved in different social 
strata. But they belong to the same order of 
human beings. There ! you notice, he asks 
Tom for a light, and they have begun to talk 
together. They are laughing now, and Tom is 
winking. I should n't wonder if they were mak- 
ing fun of the first-class passengers. Vincent has 
read more or less in his day, and he rather 
prides himself on what he calls keeping abreast 
of the times in the line of thought. See, they 
have opened the window, and are beckoning to 
me. Let us hear what they have to say. 

Drummer. Ah, there, philosopher ! You 
would n't let us in, and I guess you know your 
business. We 've had a good time in life, any- 
how. If the religious folk are right, we shall be 
in it up to our necks. If they 're wrong, they've 
been wasting a lot of valuable time. 

Howard Vincent. We've ridden straight, at all 
events. (Vincent is an authority on sporting 
matters.) We have n't pretended to be some- 
thing we were not. We've never cheated any- 
body, and we've never lied to anybody, and 
each, according to his light (this last qualifica- 
tion was for Tom's benefit), has been a gentle- 
[ '7] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

man. We've been men of the world, and we 
have found the world a reasonably satisfadory 
place. We 're in no haste to leave it. 

'The Philosopher. And may I add, gentlemen, 
that each of you has a kind and generous heart ? 

Did you observe how pleased they looked 
when I said that ? It was a little weak of me to 
say it, but I could not help it. Somehow, it is 
very difficult to be sufficiently severe to such 
easy-going, pleasant-natured fellows, who are 
content to take the world as they find it, laugh 
and grow fat. Moreover, Tom Johnson has for 
twenty years supported his old mother and in- 
valid sister, and remained single as a conse- 
quence; and Howard Vincent has a habit of 
giving away delightful sums on Christmas Day 
without advertising the fa6t. How often, on the 
occasion of death, do we hear the aphorism 
that everything counts for nothing save the 
kindly deeds of the deceased, until one is 
tempted to believe that a genial commercial 
traveller, like our friend, with a benignant soul 
is more admirable and inspiring than a highly 
sensitive gentleman and scholar. Indisputably 
this is so if the gentleman and scholar lacks the 
humanity for which the other is conspicuous; 
[ '8] 



in Search of the Ideal 

but, nevertheless, It behooves the soul in search 
of the ideal to beware of the slough of mere 
warm-heartedness. It is an attribute which, if 
relied on too exclusively as a leavening force, 
is readily made to subserve very ordinary pur- 
poses. The two Falstaffian men in the second- 
class car belong there, even though you might 
find their kindly ways and their stories attrac- 
tive up to a certain point. They are of the class 
of men who, more signally perhaps than any 
other, bar the path of the world's progress to- 
ward the stars by means of the argument that 
what has been must be, and that what is is 
good enough. They are of the men who shrug 
their shoulders when the hope is expressed that 
the abuse of liquor may be lessened and finally 
controlled; who sneer at the efforts of the po- 
lice authorities to shut up all the houses of ill- 
repute, on the ground that prostitution has 
always existed and must always exist. (That it 
will never become "unpopular," as the drum- 
mer would tell you in his breezy way.) As- 
suredly, you need to be on your guard against 
infatuation with those big, genial and (usually) 
pot-bellied personages whose large hearts and 
abundant charity and splendid appetites allow 

[ -9] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

them to discard as unworthy of a sensible man's 
regard everything but honesty, reading, spelHng 
and arithmetic (add, in the case of Howard 
Vincent, a dash of accomplishments and ag- 
nostic philosophy), Worcestershire sauce and 
jests of custom-made humor. Blessed be hu- 
mor. The man or woman without it is like a 
loaf of stale bread or a cup of brackish water. 
But to be content with the mere workaday 
world and its ways is like travelling perpetually 
with a grip-sack. When we open the grip-sack, 
what do we find ? The barest necessaries of life, 
without a trace of anything which inspires or 
refines. I have no desire to betray the private 
affairs of any commercial traveller, or to imply 
that the Bible and Shakespeare are not occa- 
sionally to be found both in the kit of the trav- 
elling man and the English leather trunk of 
the more elegant man of fashion. I am simply 
cautioning you, my male correspondents, to 
beware of accepting as final your world as you 
find it. Nothing is more sure to make you a 
second-class person. Mere good-natured com- 
mon-sense ("horse-sense," as our drummer 
would call it) is a useful virtue, but it would 
keep civilization ordinary to the crack of doom. 

[20] 



in Search of the Ideal 

Ah ! now we are likely to have trouble. No- 
tice, please, the lady coming this way. How 
graceful and elegant she is. A delicate, refined 
face and bearing. See how she sidles off from 
the third and second-class passengers with an 
expression of distaste for them which suggests 
pain. She cannot bear coarse people. She be- 
lieves herself to be an intellectual woman with 
serious tastes. She aims to be a spiritual person 
and she reads many essays — by Emerson, Mat- 
thew Arnold, Pater, and others. She is fond of 
history and politics ; not of this country, be- 
cause she claims that it is vulgar and lacks pic- 
turesqueness. But she can tell you all about the 
governments of Europe, and who is prime min- 
ister of or in authority in each of them. Democ- 
racy does not interest her. It seems to her to 
concern the affairs of dirty or common people ; 
and she cares nothing for the great social ques- 
tions of the age. They appear to her to clash 
with personal spirituality and culture. She is 
very sensitive. She has made a study of music, 
especially Wagner. She is very particular as to 
what she has to eat, but the grossness of men, 
as she calls it, offends her seriously. She be- 
lieves herself to be not very strong physically, 

[2. ] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

and she is nervous on the subjed; of arsenic 
in wall-papers and germs in drinking-water. 
She has retained her maidenly instinds to the 
last. 

What is that you ask, madam ? A seat in a 
first-class carriage. Excuse me, you cannot go 
in there. You belong in the second-class sedion 
of the train. Mistake ? There is no mistake. I 
understand perfedly. I 'm ready to take your 
word for it that you have read Dante in the 
original, and I know that you are 
Chaste as the icicle 

That^s curded by the frost from purest snoWy 

And hangs on Dianas temple. 

(Doubtless you recall the quotation.) But you 
must stay out. Your ticket reads " Personal cul- 
ture and individual salvation," and it entitles 
you to ride in any of those second-class cars. 
You don't like the passengers ? I am very sorry, 
I 'm sure, but my instrudions are explicit. I was 
told to keep out all ladies of your kind, who 
think that the ideal is to be attained by hugging 
themselves to themselves (excuse the coarseness 
of the metaphor, madam) all their days in a hot- 
house atmosphere, and playing bo-peep with 
their own souls. You intend to write a letter 



in Search of the Ideal 

about it to the Boston Evening ? Oh, very 

well. You will have to ride second-class, all the 
same. 

Enter a clergyman. This seems more promis- 
ing. 

Clergyman. Is this the first-class sedion ? I 
think my seat must be in here. 

Philosopher. First-class here, sir. Tickets, 
please. (Aside to correspondent.) A modest gen- 
tleman, forsooth. 

Clergyman (stops fumbling in his pocket for 
his tickets and sniffs suspiciously ). I smell to- 
bacco. Is there a smoking-car on the first-class 
train ? 

Philosopher. There is for those who smoke. 

Clergyman. An outrage, sir. An unchristian 
outrage. I suppose next that you will tell me 
that intoxicating fluids are sold there. 

Philosopher. Yes, sir, to those who use them. 
All the first-class passengers understand the use 
of such things in moderation. They are not in- 
jured by them. 

Clergyman. A flimsy argument, sir. Think of 
the example. I repeat it, sir ; think of the exam- 
ple. I protest against it, sir, as a crime against our 
highest civilization. I — I will have you removed 

[^3] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

from office. You are not fit to hold your position. 
I will see the governor about it immediately. I 
— I 

Philosopher (to correspondent). He fancies that 
he is arguing on the liquor question before a 
board of police commissioners. ("To clergyman.) 
The gentleman will come to order. 

Clergyman. I insist on having the smoking and 
drinking car detached, or I will not ride on the 
train. 

Philosopher. You will not ride in the first-class 
portion of it, in any event. Your ticket reads 
" Well-intentioned but overbearing visionary 
enthusiast." Come, sir, pass on, or, in spite of 
your cloth, I shall be obliged to put you in 
charge of an officer for disturbing the peace. 

I was interrupted here by my wife, Josephine. 
" Of course I understand," said she, " that he 
was very overbearing, and I have heard you say 
before that clergymen are more apt to lose their 
temper before committees than most other peo- 
ple. But the poor man was desperately in earnest. 
The whole thing means so much to him. He be- 
lieves that the world will never be redeemed un- 
til liquor and tobacco are no longer used in it. 

[h] 



in Search of the Ideal 

Do you mean that you really think this will 
never come to pass ? " 

" Never is a long time, my dear," said I. 
" But you were discussing the ideal." 
" To be sure. Have you ever considered the 
matter from the moderate-drinker and smoker's 
point of view '^. Brain-weary, muscle-tired men 
have, from generation to generation, found a 
glass of wine or spirit and a cigar a refreshment 
and a comfort. Neither agrees with some, and 
many abuse the use of both. Drunkenness among 
the poor and tippling among the rich are, per- 
haps, the greatest enemies of civilization ; and, 
consequently, there is a corps of many women 
and some men who cry out upon the use of al- 
cohol as incompatible with the world's progress. 
This sentiment at the polls expresses itself chief- 
ly in very small minorities, unless the voters are 
reasonably near to some large city or town. The 
failure of the movement to make important 
headway might be ascribed to the fadt that the 
mass of people are still unenlightened, were there 
any signs that the intelligent workers of the 
world are disposed to side with the wearers of 
the white ribbon. The use of champagne, claret, 
brandy, and whiskey continues unabated over 

[^5] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

the civilized world, if one is to judge by eco- 
nomic statistics and trade circulars. They are 
quaffed on state and festal occasions, generally 
with moderation, by lords and ladies, statesmen, 
lawyers, doftors, bankers, soldiers, poets, artists, 
and often by bishops and clergymen. At ninety- 
nine out of every hundred formal dinner-parties 
in London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, alcohol 
is offered in some form to the guests as a stim- 
ulus to conversation, and, were it not so, there 
would be ninety-nine grumblers to every one 
man or woman who, at present, turns his or her 
glasses down with an ill-bred, virtuous air." 

"And yet," said Josephine, "I have heard 
you say constantly that it would be no particular 
deprivation to you to give up wine." 

"No more it would. In this country, with its 
stimulatingclimate,most nervous people are bet- 
ter for a very little if any alcohol, and many men 
are apt to find that it is simpler not to drink at 
all. But, remember, we are considering the ques- 
tion whether there is any reason why the man 
or woman in perfed: health, and in search of the 
ideal, should be a teetotaler, and if there is any 
probability that the world will banish alcohol 
and cigars from the dignified occasions of the 
[.6] 



in Search of the Ideal 

future. In other words, when the world has 
learned not to drink and smoke too much, will 
it cease to drink and smoke altogether? I know 
that the advocates of total-abstinence argue 
about the serenity and sane joy of a cold-water 
banquet, and it may be that we are a trifle hysteri- 
cal in our declarations that conversation must 
lag until one has had a glass of champagne ; but 
is not much of the light, masculine laughter of 
life associated with the fruit of the grape and the 
aroma of tobacco ? Have you ever tried to pic- 
ture to yourself a world as it would be if there 
were well-enforced, rigid prohibition everywhere, 
and the tobacco-plant were no more?" 

Josephine gave a little laugh. " You say the 
masculine laughter of the world. I assure you 
that much of the masculine laughter which you 
associate with the fruit of the grape is associated 
in the feminine mind with conjugal or maternal 
tears. I quite understand your appeal to the im- 
agination from the masculine point of view. That 
is, I suppose the words wine and tobacco bring 
in their train for man many pleasing and even in- 
spiriting images ; that under their influence the 
soldier believes himself more brave and wins bat- 
tles in anticipation ; that the artist gets a glimpse 

[^7] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

of his great pidure, and that the tired husband 
and father sees evolve from the bottom of his 
beer-mug a transfigured refledlion of his wife and 
children. But we women, who, as a sex, have al- 
ways done without wine and tobacco, know from 
experience that, however lofty and delightful 
your visions at such times, there is always a re- 
aftion after alcohol, and that we generally get 
the full benefit of the reaction. If, now, inspir- 
ing visions never came to us and other total- 
abstainers, there would seem to be some reason 
why we should be willing to bear the brunt of 
man's inebrieties a little longer; but really, my 
dear philosopher, is there any reason to believe 
that we do not entertain visions quite as inspir- 
ing and delightful as yours ? We drink only 
tea — too much of it for our nerves, I dare say 
— but we will gladly give that up if you will 
abjure alcohol and cigars. There certainly is no 
poetry in the aroma of tobacco in the curtains, 
next day, and we pass the morning with it when 
you have gone down-town. Don't you think 
there is a great deal of humbug in the notion 
that in order to laugh lightly and remember 
gladly men need to be titillated either by wine 
or tobacco ? I 'm glad you would n't allow that 

[28 ] 



in Search of the Ideal 

bumptious clergyman to ride in a first-class car, 
but I don't see why the world should not be 
just as gay, and many women twice as happy, 
if there were no wine or tobacco. Only think 
how light-hearted woman would be if the incu- 
bus of man's drunkenness, under which she 
has staggered for hundreds of years, should be 
lifted off forever ! She would be so bubbling 
over with happiness that, even though as a 
consequence man were in the dumps and with- 
out visions, she would make him merry in spite 
of himself." 

"Very likely, Josephine. I am disposed to 
agree with you that the jest and merriment of 
masculine youth would not be entirely and 
hopelessly repressed. But you do not take suf- 
ficiently into consideration — and in this you 
imitate the bumptious clergyman who was go- 
ing to have me removed — the world's cravings 
and necessities as a world. If, pardon me, men 
were all women in their appetites, and life were 
one grand pastoral a la Puvis de Chavannes — 
if, in short, the world were not the bustling, 
feverish, perplexing, exhausting, crushing, cruel 
world, men would not crave stimulants to help 
them to do their work or to forget it. If there 

[^9] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

were no alcohol or cigars, would not those who 
now use either to excess have recourse to some 
other form of stimulant or fatigue and pain dis- 
guiser instead ? Why should those who have 
learned the great lesson of life, self-control, re- 
nounce the enjoyment of being artificially 
strengthened or cheered because others let 
their appetites run away with them and make 
beasts of them ? I have, indeed, already sug- 
gested that it is a dangerous argument to in- 
stance an existing state of affairs as a reason 
against change; but I beg to call your attention 
to the fad that the world seems to pay very 
little heed to the lamentations of the teetotalers, 
so far as total-abstinence is concerned. There 
has been a change of temper among all classes 
in the dire6tion of moderation in the use of 
liquor and wine, and legislation regulating and 
restriding licenses is becoming popular. But if 
the wearers of the white ribbon were to make 
inquiries of the dealers in glass-ware, they would 
find that no fewer newly married couples, among 
the educated and well-to-do in every country, 
buy wine-glasses as a necessary table article, in 
order to provide wine or beer for those whom 
they exped to entertain. There are certainly no 

[30] 



in Search of the Ideal 

signs that society, in the best sense, has any 
intention of adopting prohibition as a cardinal 
virtue, but many signs that it is seriously de- 
termined to make warfare on inebriety, and no 
longer to proffer it the cloak of social protection 
when the offenders happen to be what the world 
used to call gentlemen. One's ideal should not 
be too remote from probable human conclu- 
sions, and it does not seem likely, from present 
indications, that man, unless he be persuaded 
that the moderate use of stimulants is seriously 
injurious to his health, will ever be willing to 
banish them from the markets of the world be- 
cause a certain portion of the community has 
not the necessary intelligence or self-control to 
use them with discretion. As for tobacco, it is 
a long cry from now to the millennium, but a 
philosopher cannot afford, at this stage of the 
itinerary, to cut off the smoking-car from the 
first-class portion of the train, for by so doing 
he might confound even archbishops and other 
exemplary personages." 



[31 ] 



To A Young Man or Woman 
in Search of the Ideal. III. 

^p|M)^P WAS interrupted at this point in 
«^ T (1^ "^y letter by the loud ringing of 



the front-door bell. Glancing at the 
*i^H^H^ clock, I observed that it was eleven. 
Consequently, the servants must have gone to 
bed. Under these circumstances, a philosopher 
has to open the front door himself, or submit 
to a prolonged tintinnabulation. " Ting-a-ling-a, 
ling-a-ling-a-ling" went the bell again. 

"It must be a telegram," said Josephine. "I 
wonder what has happened?" 

" Or a dinner-invitation which the servant was 
told to deliver this morning," I answered. "One 
would suppose that, after turning out the gas in 
the hall, one could work without callers." 

Having lighted up, and having unbolted the 
inner door, I beheld, through the glass window 
of the outer, a young man in a slouch hat. Evi- 
dently he was not a telegraph-messenger or a 
domestic. Nor did he have exaftly the asped: 
of a midnight marauder. Nevertheless, I opened 
the door merely a crack and inquired, gruffly: 

"What do you wish ?" 

[3^] 



in Search of the Ideal 

Said a blithe, friendly voice: "I saw your 
light, and I took the liberty of ringing. Can't 
you give me three thousand words on the death 
of the Czar of Russia ?" 

Before he had finished this sentence, he had 
backed me, by his persuasive manner, from the 
vestibule into the hall, and I remembered vaguely 
that I had seen him somewhere. 

"I 'm the local correspondent of the New 
York Despatch^'' he said, to refresh my memory. 

I recolleded then that he had tried to inter- 
view me six months before on my domestic 
interior, and that I had politely declined the 
honor. He was a lean, alert, bright-eyed man 
of thirty-five with a pleasant smile. 

"Is n't it rather late to ring my door-bell?" 
I inquired, with dignity. (My mental language 
was, "What do you mean, you infernal young 
reprobate, by ringing my door-bell at this hour 
of the night on such an impudent errand?" 
But, in the presence of the press, even a phi- 
losopher is disposed to be diplomatic.) 

"I needed you, badly," was the reply. "I 've 
got to wire to New York to-night three thou- 
sand words on the death of the Czar." 

"What do I know about the Czar of Russia ? 

[33] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

Why don't you go to the historians or politi- 
cians ? There are several in the neighborhood. 
I *m a philosopher." 

"I 've tried them," he said, with a patient 
smile. "They were out or in bed. Then I thought 
of you. Anything you would say on the sub- 
jed: would be read with great interest." 

"Pshaw!" I answered. 

By this time he had backed me into the din- 
ing-room, and, under the influence of diplomacy, 
I searched for a box of cigars. I had no inten- 
tion of giving him a single word on the de- 
ceased ruler of all the Russias, but I wished to 
let myself down easy, so to speak, and retain 
his good-will. 

"Ah!" he said, settling in a chair, with a Ca- 
bana, "this is the first restful moment I have 
had to-day." He was pensive during a few puffs, 
then he added: "A reporter's life is not all 
strawberry ice-cream. Do you suppose I enjoy 
rousing a man at this hour of the night ? It 
makes me shiver whenever I do it." 

" I should think it might," I answered, in spite 
of myself. "Some men would be apt to resent it." 

"You misunderstand me. I do not shiver 
from physical fear, but because my sense of 

[34] 



in Search of the Ideal 

propriety is wounded. I dare say," he continued, 
looking at me narrowly, "that you think I take 
no interest in the ideal; that you suppose me to 
be a materialistic Philistine." 

You will appreciate that this was startling and 
especially interesting to me under the circum- 
stances. I, in my turn, examined my visitor 
more carefully. There were evidences in his 
countenance of a sensitive soul, and of refined 
intelligence. The thought occurred to me that 
here was an opportunity to obtain testimony. 
"I think that every thoughtful man must take 
an interest in the ideal," I answered, "and, in 
spite of the lateness of the hour, I had not set 
you down as an exception to the rule. Curiously 
enough, however, I was busy when the bell rang 
answering a letter from several correspondents 
in search of the ideal. I will read it to you, if 
you like, as far as I have got." 

Perhaps I hoped that in submitting he would 
appear slightly crest-fallen. But, on the con- 
trary, he showed obvious enthusiasm at the sug- 
gestion, and begged me to fetch my manuscript 
at once. Josephine met me at the top of the 
stairs, and whispered that she had been dying 
with curiosity to know who it was. 

[3J] 



T'o a Young Man or Woman 

"A reporter," I whispered, in reply. 

"What does he wish for?" 

"Three thousand words on the death of the 
Czar of Russia," I said, mysteriously; then I 
picked up my letter and glided away with my 
finger on my lips. " If he stays too long, dear, 
you may come down, as a gentle hint." 

I began to read, and, as I read, my heart 
warmed toward my visitor on account of the 
absorbed attention he paid to my philosophy. 
"And now," said I, when I had finished, "pray 
tell what is your ideal ? You have told me that 
you were interested in one." 

He shook his head sadly. "No matter about 
me. It 's too late. I can only shiver and go on. 
But I 'm interested in what you *re trying to do, 
and, if you like, I 'm willing to throw in a word 
now and then while you work it out. I 'm glad," 
he added, "that you hit the back numbers a rap." 

I told him that he was not exaftly intelligible. 

" I mean the old familiar aspirants ; in partic- 
ular the lady interested in culture and personal 
salvation. There was no question about the man 
of the world and the drummer; one might feel 
kindly toward them, but of course they must 
ride second-class, and most newspaper men 

[36] 



in Search of the Ideal 

would ride with them — and some of the editors 
would have to go third. Easy-going common- 
ness is the curse of democracy, even if I, who 
am a democrat of the democrats, do say it. But 
what I like most — and it 's the nub of the whole 
matter — is that you knew enough to throw out 
that woman; she might equally well have been 
a man, for there are plenty of the same sort. If 
you '11 excuse my saying so," he said, biting his 
cigar fiercely, "I shouldn't have expedled it of 
a philosopher like you, and I honor your intel- 
ligence because of it. The man or woman of 
to-day in search of the ideal comes plumb up 
against sweating, bleeding, yearning democracy, 
and whoever funks, or shirks the situation has 
no first-class soul — be he or she ever so deli- 
cate, or cultured, or learned." 

I could not but feel gratified at his fervor, 
nor did I mind his bringing his hand down on 
the table with the last word by way of emphasis, 
for he had grasped my meaning precisely. Evi- 
dently, too, he had taken the bit between his 
teeth and meant to have his say, for, as he lighted 
another cigar, his nostrils dilated with suppressed 
earnestness and his eye gleamed significantly. 

"I 'm not a man of culture," he continued. 

[37] 



'To a Young Man or JVomait 

"I have the effrontery, from the necessities of 
my trade, to ring at your door-bell at midnight, 
and I know my own limitations, but I know 
what culture is. When I stand on the cliff and 
watch the waves hurl themselves against the 
shore — when on a peaceful summer's night I 
view the heavens in their glory, I realize in my 
own behalf something of what those who have 
had more opportunities than I are able to feel, 
and I know that I am illiterate and common as 
compared with many. But, Mr. Philosopher, 
what has been the philosophy of beauty and art 
and intelled and elegance through all the cen- 
turies until lately? Individual seclusion, appro- 
priation, and arrogance. The admirable soul, the 
admirable genius, the admirable refinement was 
that which gloried in its superiority to the rest 
of the world and claimed the right of aloofness. 
The monk and the nun lived apart from the 
common life, and were thought to walk nearer 
heaven because of it. That idea of the priesthood 
has nearly passed away, but aloofness and arro- 
gance are still too typical of the mental and the 
social aristocrats. They glory in their own supe- 
riority and delicacy, lift their skirts if they 're 
women, hold their noses if they 're men, and 

[38 ] 



in Search of the Ideal 

thank heaven they are not as the masses are. 
They are charitable, they are sometimes gen- 
erous, and invariably didadlic, but they hold 
aloof from the common herd. They refuse to 
open the gates of sympathy, and sometimes it 
seems as though the gates will never be opened 
until they are broken down by the masses." 

My visitor suddenly stopped, and started to 
rise from his chair. Turning to investigate the 
cause of the interruption, I encountered my 
wife, Josephine, armed with a tray containing 
a brazier and the essentials for a midnight repast. 

"You will be able to talk better if you have 
something to eat," she exclaimed, affably. 

The ceremony of introdudlion having been 
performed successfully without causing our guest 
to notice that we did not know his name, I 
begged him to continue his address. 

"Yes, do," said Josephine, "while I cook the 
oysters. I could not help overhearing a little of 
your conversation, so I know the general drift." 
\_^JSlote. — That means she had been leaning over 
the banisters, listening.] 

"A lunch will taste very good," said the re- 
porter. 
\_Note. — Here he ran up against one of my pet 



To a Young Man or Woman 

prejudices, and for a moment I almost forgot 
that I was doing the honors of my own house. 
I almost said: "Speaking of democracy and cul- 
ture, my dear sir, I should like to inquire if you 
have any authority for your use of the word 
Munch'? As employed by the appropriating and 
the arrogant it has long meant a meal or a bite 
between breakfast and dinner; but, as used by 
democracy, it seems to apply to afternoon tea 
or late supper equally well."] 

"We were speaking of the ideal," he contin- 
ued, addressing my wife, "and I was just saying 
that only recently had the world of noblest 
thought and aims begun to recognize that an 
ideal life must necessarily include interest in and 
sympathy for common humanity, and that the 
mere aristocrat of religion, of culture, or of man- 
ners, has ceased to be the Sir Galahad of civili- 
zation." 

"Indeed it must be so," said Josephine, "and 
the idea is rapidly gaining ground. People used 
to be satisfied with making charitable donations; 
now they investigate fads and conditions and 
give themselves. But it isn't always easy for 
those who love beauty to avoid shrinking from 
people and things not beautiful. There is noth- 

[40] 



in Search of the Ideal 

ing which freezes a sensitive, artistic nature more 
quickly than dirt and ugliness, and yet the ideal 
modern soul does not turn away, but seeks to 
sympathize and to share. Might you not, dear 
(Josephine was now addressing me, not the re- 
porter), say that the key-note of the ideal life is 
refined sympathy?" 

"It certainly is an indispensable attribute of 
it," I answered. 

"How much easier it is," mused Josephine, 
as she stirred the oysters in the melting butter, 
"to wrap one's self in one's own aesthetic aspi- 
rations and to let the common world shift for 
itself. It was possible, once, to do that and be- 
lieve one's self a saint, but that day has passed 
forever. It 's very hard, though, sometimes, Mr. 
Reporter. Constant contadl with the common 
world is liable to make one terribly discouraged 
unless one has abiding faith in the future of 
democracy." 

"I know it; I know it," he replied, eagerly. 
"We're a depressing lot — many of us. Don't 
you suppose I understand how the sensitive 
soul must suffer when it has to deal with some 
of us ? Take the cheap, ignorant, mercenary, city 
politician, such as disgraces the aldermanic chair 

[41 ] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

of our large cities — there 's a discouraging mon- 
ster for you. There is a host of others; the shal- 
low, self-sufficient, impertinent type of shop- 
girl, whose sole concern is her finery and her 
* fellow'; the small dealer of a certain sort, who 
adulterates his wares, lies to maintain his cause, 
and will not hesitate to burn his stock in order 
to obtain the insurance money; the sordid num- 
ber who seek to break the wills of their relations 
who have devised the property to others; the 
many, too, who make a mess of marriage, and 
leave wife or husband on the paltriest pleas. I 
know them well; they are the people, they are 
humanity, and they can no longer be ignored 
and loftily set aside as 'the uneducated mass' 
by those whose finer instinds cause them to live 
free from these sins. Hard ? Of course it 's hard, 
but the best hope for the improvement of soci- 
ety lies in the education and enlightenment of 
that mass; and this can be compassed only 
through the efforts and sympathy of the intelli- 
gent and refined." 

Just then the clock struck midnight. "Bless 
me!" he exclaimed, every one will be in bed, 
and what will become of my telegram on the 
Czar of Russia? Instead of getting three thou- 

[4i] 



in Search of the Ideal 

sand words from you, I have been giving you 
that number on your own topic." 

"For once, then, I have got the better of a 
reporter," said I. 

"But before I give you any supper, Mr. 
Reporter," said Josephine, "you must acknow- 
ledge, too, that the movement is gaining ground, 
and that the refined and educated are changing 
their point of view. Think of the hospitals, think 
of the museums, think of the colleges, think of 
the model tenements, the schools for manual 
training and cooking." 

" I do acknowledge it ; it is grand and inspir- 
ing. I have been merely calling attention to the 
fad that in the search for the ideal their new point 
of view must become permanent and extend still 
farther. To counterbalance your fads I could cite 
others. Think of the doings of the multi-million- 
aires, their modern palaces, their extravagant 
entertainments, their steam-yachts, their home- 
desecrating wives — a lot of third-class passen- 
gers, with no more claim to be considered first- 
class than the alderman and the shop-girl and 
the other democrats of whom we were speaking 
a moment ago. Nothing of the ideal there, and 
they had such a grand chance ! Yes, yes, I do 
[43 ] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

admit, madam, that the efforts and progress of 
the refined and intelligent during the last quar- 
er of a century have been notable and stirring, 
but democracy has been negledled for so many 
centuries that it may prove a little ungrateful at 
first. And here am I, Mr. Philosopher, keeping 
your train in three sections waiting all this time." 

" The oysters are cooked," said Josephine. 

" Five minutes for lunch ! " cried the reporter. 
\Note. — Confound the man ! Why should he 
call my supper a lunch ?] 



[44] 



To A Young Man or Woman 
in Search of the Ideal. IV. 

i^|ifS|!fS3jHAT beatific mental condition as- 
*w. /-p -w. sociated by my midnight visitor, the 
M^ M M^ reporter, with people of alleged cul- 
^^^^1^? tivation and aesthetic tastes, when in 
the presence of the beauties or marvels of na- 
ture, like sunset, mountain scenery, ocean calm 
and ocean storm, is doubtless a familiar experi- 
ence to you. The wonder book of nature is con- 
stantly being held up by poet and painter as the 
source of human ideality, and all the traditions 
of civilization urge you to attain that degree of 
artistic development under the white light of 
which the seals of that book become loosened, 
and you are able to read in the evening star and 
the mountain torrent lessons of inspiration and 
truth. Next to nature in their aesthetic potency 
are her hand-maids, music, sculpture, letters and 
painting — briefly, the civilized arts, the medium 
by which mortals seek to woo and hold fast to 
beauty. We listen to the gorgeous anthems of 
the world's most famous composers, and our 
souls thrill and vibrate with emotion; life seems 
grand and everything possible. We stand before 
[45] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

the greatest marbles and canvasses, and we seem 
to have truth within our grasp and nature al- 
most subjugated. How exquisitely falls on the 
senses the sublimity of the lines 

Fair as a star^ when only one 
Is shining in the sky. 

We catch a glimpse there of what we call heaven. 
Is there any more satisfaftory occupation for a 
thirsty soul than to scan the fairness of the twi- 
light heavens when the evening star shines alone 
and the saffron or purple glories of the depart- 
ing day irradiate the west ? 

Not andavam per lo vespero attenti 

Oltre^ quanta potean gli occhi allungarsi^ 
Contra i raggi serotini e lucenti. 

So wrote Dante in immortal verse, to portray the 
aesthetic value of a kindred experience. 

I sele6ted those lines of Wordsworth because 
he, of all the poets, suggests more ostensibly in 
his verse deliberate pursuit of the ideal. Shelley, 
indeed, reveals a bolder purpose to unmask the 
infinite, but his mood is oftener that of an auda- 
cious stormer of heaven than of a reverent seeker 
for perfed truth. We feel in Wordsworth a con- 
scious intent to distill from the study of nature 

[46] 



in Search of the Ideal 

and of man a spiritual exhalation, which would en- 
lighten him and enable him, by force of his po- 
etic gifts, to enlighten us as to how best to live. 
When we think of him, we see him amid the ex- 
quisite scenery of his favorite lakes, walking in 
close communion with God ; discerning the man- 
ifestations of the infinite in the mountain and the 
wild flower, in the splendor of the storm and the 
faithful doings of the humblest lives. 

Ever since he wrote Wordsworth has been 
the patron saint of introspedive souls. In his 
poetry they have found not merely suggestion 
but a creed. The poet himself was at heart an en- ' 
thusiast and a revolutionary, and his worship of 
quiet beauty and subjedive refinement was the 
expression of a design broader and deeper in its 
scope than many of his followers have been will- 
ing to adopt. He revealed not merely the aes- 
thetic significance of the contemplative life which 
substitutes soul analysis, with God in nature as a 
guide, for the grosser interests of the flesh, but 
also the unholiness of class distindlions and of 
the indifference of man to his fellow-man as 
distinguished from himself. The followers of 
Wordsworth were, for the most part, prompt 
to accept the first without including the second 

[47] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

and equally fundamental tenet of his philosophy. 
What, a quarter of a century ago, was the ordi- 
nary practice of the cultivated and refined, who 
had been stirred either diredly or indiredly by 
the teaching of the great poet to adopt contem- 
plation as the key-note of their daily lives? 
Their greatest number was in beautiful, rural 
England; but the spiritual atmosphere breathed 
by them soon found its way across the Atlantic, 
and served to exalt and modify the ever moral 
inclinations of New England. 

Picture, if you will, the model country house 
of the English country gentleman of comfort- 
able means and refined tastes. To begin with, 
the structure itself is charming; time has be- 
stowed upon it piduresqueness, and art has made 
it beautiful with the simple but effedlive arrange- 
ment of vines and flowers. There is nothing of 
the vileness of earth at hand to mar or oflFend. 
The proprietor himself, an elder son, has been 
left with a competence; no riches, but sufficient 
to enable him to pursue his literary or other 
refined interests without molestation from pecu- 
niary cares. The interior is tasteful and aestheti- 
cally satisfying; the spacious, comfortable rooms 
contain all that is desirable in the way of uphol- 

[48] 



in Search of the Ideal 

stery, ornaments, books, and pidlures. The large 
drawing-room windows command a fair expanse 
of velvet lawn, flanked by stately trees. Beyond 
lies an undulating acreage of ancestral metes and 
bounds, rich in verdure and precious with asso- 
ciations. Here lives our gentleman the greater 
portion of the year; lives aspiringly according to 
his Wordsworthian creed. He eschews or uses 
with admirable moderation the coarser pleasures 
and vanities of life. Unselfishness, gentleness, 
and nicety of thought and speech are the cus- 
tom of his household. He himself finds conge- 
nial occupation in literary or scientific research, 
in the hope of adding some book or monograph 
to the world's store of art or knowledge. His 
wife, in co-operation with the church, plays a 
gracious part among their tenants or among the 
village sick and poor, teaching her daughters to 
dispense charity in the form of soup, coals, jel- 
lies, and blankets. Parents and children alike, 
jealously intending to attain holiness and cul- 
ture, continuously take an account of their in- 
dividual spiritual successes and failures, and 
though they hold these auditings with God in 
the church, they renew them often under the 
inspiring influence of nature. 

[49] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day^ 
or, as Dante expressed a similar conception, 

^T was now the hour that turneth back desire 

In those who sail the sea^ and melts the heart 

The day they ''ve said to their sweet friends farewell^ 

And the new pilgrim penetrates with love. 

If he doth hear from far away a bell 

That seemeth to deplore the dying day. 

This is the hour when the Wordsworthian 
spirit, refined, conscientious, aspiring, beauty 
and duty loving, sees through the splendor of 
the lucent, saffron sky, heaven open, and the 
angels of God ascending and descending. Not 
always is the vision so adorable. Often enough 
the gazer knows the bitterness of divine dis- 
content, and finds the golden glory but a bar, 
shutting out God. In the favorable hour, though, 
comes the rapture, and the transfiguration; the 
exquisite, refined feelings seem to find com- 
munion with the infinite, and a voice from hea- 
ven to say: 

Well doney good and faithful servant. 

I have sele(5led this experience of the culti- 
vated English household rather than that of 
the purely religious life as an example, for the 

[5°] 



in Search of the Ideal 

reason that in it the aesthetic side is represented 
in the soul-hunger, and that the existing condi- 
tions of earth are, to a certain extent, taken into 
account. In the purely religious life, the emo- 
tions of the exalted soul have, in the past at 
least, been prone to exclude the adiual condi- 
tions of human life from consideration. The 
thought has been that the earthly existence is 
travail, and at best a discipline; that the joys 
of life are vanity, and the mundane problems 
of life unworthy of the interested attention of 
the heaven-seeking soul. Modern religious the- 
ories have modified this point of view, but cer- 
tainly in some se6ts still the aesthetic value of 
existence is almost contemptuously discarded 
by religion. I have taken the beautiful lives of 
the Wordsworthians as an example, also be- 
cause the religious element is so manifestly cher- 
ished and cultivated in them. It is intended in 
them that art and God should work together, 
or, more accurately, the precept is that the aes- 
thetic side of humanity is one of the noblest 
manifestations of the infinite within us. It is 
significant in this connexion that though art 
has often reached its apogee in periods of moral 
decay, the ruin of the nation, thus robbed of 

[5- ] 



To a Young Man or Wo^nan 

spiritual vitality, has soon followed, in spite 
of the glory of its sculpture and canvasses. But 
that is a mere interjedion. The point I wish to 
suggest is this: The sane soul recognizes, when 
face to face with truth, that what we see in the 
glory of the sunset, when we think we walk 
with God, must be, in order to be of value, an 
inspiration based on the conditions of mundane 
life. Without this, prayer and adoration become 
a mere nervous exhalation, reaching out for 
something which has no more substance than 
an ignus fatuus. The old saints who lived and 
died in prayer, ignoring human relations, seem 
to us to-day to have been wofully deluded. They 
yearned to be translated from a world to which 
they had contributed nothing but the desire to 
be holy. This desire is of the essence of the 
matter; and so we consent to give their rever- 
ences the benison of our distinguished consid- 
eration. But aspiring souls, as evidenced by the 
aesthetic man and woman of culture, presently 
perceived the error. They recognized that as- 
piration, to be vital, must start with a concep- 
tion of the world as it was, and seek a realiza- 
tion of the world as it might be, and that in 
this seeking lay service to God and preparation 

[52] 



in Search of the Ideal 

for heaven. Proceeding they fixed on unselfish 
human love and on beauty as the motive of 
their creed, and endeavored to live lives ani- 
mated by these principles. This creed has been 
the real creed of aspiring humanity during the 
past century and a half, and it still seems suffi- 
cient to many. There have been diverse differ- 
ences of application and administration in con- 
nexion with it, according as the pendulum 
swung more or less near to one or the other of 
the two cardinal points of faith, unselfish love, 
or exquisite beauty. There have been some who, 
in their desire to make the relations of man 
toward those with whom he lived and whom he 
loved more ideal, have been disposed to ignore 
the claims of color and elegance; and there have 
been others so eager in their allegiance to the 
cause of beauty that they have exalted sense 
and emotion at the expense of unselfishness and 
purity. Essentially, however, the ideal life of 
the modern centuries has sought to develop the 
individual soul by stimulating its faculties to 
cherish self-sacrificing devotion to familiar 
friends, aesthetic appreciation of form, color and 
sound, and exquisite personal refinement. The 
Christian life, in its highest form, from this amal- 

[53 ] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

gamation of human traits, has construdted an 
ideal for the soul founded on something tan- 
gible and substantial in human consciousness. 
When the Christian said, "O God, make me 
pure and noble," it has been no longer neces- 
sary to rhapsodize on a heaven concerning which 
he knew nothing, and to disclaim all interest in 
this earth. On the contrary, he has appreciated 
that conceptions of the ideal must be based on 
human conditions or they cease to be intelligi- 
ble, and that the soul which seeks God can reach 
him only through faithfulness to a method of 
life, the aim of which is to make the best use 
of earth and its possibilities. 

Beautiful as have been the lives which have 
resulted from this aesthetic spirituality, the world 
has been beginning to realize, during the last 
twenty-five years, that this is a creed partially 
outworn, or, rather, a creed hampered by its 
limitations. In taking its suggestion for the ideal 
from the world, noble society chose to accept 
economic conditions as they were, and to fash- 
ion an ideal which necessarily shut out the larger 
portion of humanity from the possibility of at- 
taining it. The aesthetic satisfadiion which we 
draw from the sunset is due to the pleasure 

[54] 



in Search of the Ideal 

which conscience feels in its allegiance to an 
ideal of its own devising, and seeing God is only 
another term for the solemn identification of 
man's aspirations. The Wordsworthian soul, as 
interpreted by his followers, assumed that the 
political conditions of society were always to 
remain the same, or, more accurately speaking, 
it accepted those conditions as permanent and 
continuously inevitable. In other words, it did 
not foresee democracy. In short, its ideal was 
essentially aristocratic and exclusive, and it con- 
tinues so stubbornly in the present day in many 
circles. To be sure, it has included and continues 
to include in its formula the carrying of soups, 
jellies, coals, and blankets to the poor, and the 
proffering of educational advantages to the ig- 
norant, but it never has predicated, as essential 
to the world's true progress, such fundamental 
changes in the social status of society as would 
involve the annihilation of class distindtions and 
a greater general happiness for the mass of hu- 
manity. To be sure, there have always been 
individual philanthropists, who insisted upon 
these changes as vital, but they have been ig- 
nored by the leaders of ideal thought as vision- 
ary enthusiasts, or maligned as disturbers of 

[55] 



To a You7tg Man or Woman 

permanent society. It has been the struggle of 
democracy itself that has been the chief revealer 
of a new vision in the sunset, until now, at last, 
the soul in search of the ideal appreciates that 
it does not walk with God unless it sees in the 
saffron glory its own sympathy with these new 
conditions. 

The development of this recognition has 
been tolerably swift in certain directions. New 
hospitals, new colleges, college settlements 
among the poor, are concrete evidences of the 
modern spirit, and equally significant, if less 
heralded, are the faithful, zealous labors of phy- 
sicians, teachers, clergymen, and the host of 
workers in various lines of industry, where the 
earnest, self-sacrificing work done is rarely if 
ever paid for, in dollars and cents, commensu- 
rate with its value. The serious energy of the 
best humanity, instead of pluming itself in the 
sedudive contemplation of aesthetic beauty, 
seems rather to be celebrating the apotheosis of 
dirt. It feels that the cleansing of the physical 
and moral filth from our slums, the relief of 
appalling ignorance and superstition, the com- 
bating of political dishonesty and the checking 
of private greed are more to be desired at this 

[56] 



in Search of the Ideal 

time than great marbles and a great literature. 
Or, rather, perhaps, it seems probable that great 
marbles and a great literature will not come to 
us until the leaven of this new ideal expresses 
itself in the truths of art. The sane, aspiring 
soul can no longer be satisfied unless it recog- 
nizes the inevitableness and the pathos of de- 
mocracy and adjusts its human perspedlive ac- 
cordingly. 

The world of vested rights and wealth is still 
reluctant to accept this new sestheticism, and 
the soul in search of the ideal will find the al- 
lurements of aristocratic culture still insisted on 
as the secret of noble living. Social arrogance 
and the exclusive tendencies of class are slow in 
yielding to the hostility even of republican forms 
of government. In this country parents who 
profess to be Americans still choose to send 
their children to private instead of to the pub- 
lic schools, in order to separate them from the 
mass of the people. The doftrine of social caste, 
thus early impressed upon the youth of both 
sexes, serves to produce a class of citizens who 
are not really in sympathy with popular gov- 
ernment. If one questions sometimes the depth 
of purpose of highly evolved man, and doubts 

[57] 



To a Young Man or Woman 

the existence of God, it is because of the lavish 
wantonness of living of some of the very rich in 
the presence of the thousands of miserable and 
wretched creatures who still degrade our large 
cities. But there is this to be said in this connec- 
tion : This new aesthetic ideal is at least partially 
the fruit of the awakening of humanity to a 
keener appreciation of the conditions of human 
life; but its progress is made certain by the com- 
ing evolution of democracy, which slowly but 
surely will overwhelm the aristocratic spirit for- 
ever, even though aestheticism, as realized by 
the arrogant and exclusive, perish in the process. 
The ideal life to-day is that which maintains the 
noblest aims of the aspiring past, cherishing un- 
selfishness, purity, courage, truth, joy, existence, 
fineness of sentiment and aesthetic beauty; but 
cherishes these in the spirit and for the purposes 
of a broader humanity than the melting soul has 
hitherto discerned in the sunset, the ocean, or the 
starry heavens. There are among us men and wo- 
men living in this spirit of idealism, and they, O, 
my correspondents ! are the first-class passengers. 



[58 ] 




To A Modern Woman with 
Social Ambitions. I. 

|N the first place let me assure you 
that I am in sympathy with you. 
I am not one of those unreason- 
able philosophers who would 
have every wife merge her iden- 
tity in that of her husband, and every spinster 
who has decided not to marry relegated to ob- 
scure lodgings with a parrot and a dog. My sen- 
timents recognize the justice and the value of the 
emancipation movement by means of which wo- 
man has obtained freedom to arrange her life 
conformably to her own ideas as to what is sal- 
utary and entertaining for her as an individual, 
whether she be married or single, beautiful or 
plain. In homely phrase the world has become 
woman's oyster, and, save for the little matter 
of the ballot, a restriction concerning which the 
subje6t-matter of this letter does not require me 
to agitate you, every woman is at liberty to open 
her oyster according to her own sweet will. Filial 
limitations and the other circumstances of her 
environment must prohibit this and make desir- 
able that manner of living, just as in the case of 

[59] 



To a Modern Woman 

man; but to all intents and purposes, if she be 
clear-headed and ambitious, she is free to do 
what she chooses in the way she chooses, whe- 
ther it be to preside over a drawing-room ex- 
quisitely, to guide a woman's club to grace and 
glory, to renounce the world for the sake of art 
and a studio, or, it may be, to combine all these 
occupations in one seething round of tense exis- 
tence which, according to the constitution of the 
subjedl, is liable to terminate abruptly in nervous 
prostration or, baffling the predictions of the 
dodors, to continue indefinitely unto hale and 
bright-eyed longevity. In brief, I make my best 
bow to the modern woman; I admire her and 
am stimulated by her. Indeed, I take her so seri- 
ously in her endeavor to be independent that I 
am almost ready to let her stand up in an eledlric- 
car or other overcrowded conveyance. I have 
on occasions even made so free as to bend for- 
ward in the theatre and, lacking an introduction, 
ask her to take off the high hat which obscured 
my view of the stage. Verily, these are piping 
times of progress for woman, as every one knows, 
and I am glad to put on record as a philoso- 
pher that I approve of and am edified by them. 
So much, my dear correspondents, to assure 

[60] 



with Social Ambitions 

you of my sympathy and my distinguished 
consideration. There are five of you, but three 
out of the five — a maid almost hoping always 
to remain one, a wife almost sorry that she is 
one, and a widow almost certain that she never 
will be anything else — have written to me as 
the result of what is known colloquially as the 
dumps. That is to say, you have become so- 
cially ambitious from stress of circumstances, 
because your dolls are stuffed with sawdust. 
But for the letters of Numbers 4 and 5 I should 
be tempted to adopt the manner of a French 
philosopher and dismiss you with this piece 
of counsel: Love some one else. Numbers 4 and 
5, respedlively, a wife thoroughly happy in the 
wedded state, and a radiant, able-bodied spin- 
ster haughtily unconcerned about love and 
lovers, are not to be answered by such a sim- 
ple gallicism. The frame of mind of these two 
last-mentioned ladies was evidently not induced 
by disappointment; they are not seeking social 
activity as an antidote to care or as a mere 
occupation to consume time. Their letters 
clearly indicate to me a consciousness of 
stored-up capabilities and an ambition to dis- 
play them. Devoted as Number 4 obviously is to 
[6. ] 



To a Modern Woman 

her husband, it is no less clear that she is not 
content to be regarded merely as his wife. Simi- 
larly, Number 5, though serene at the prospedl 
of living without a mate, still cherishes the 
intention of preserving her identity. In other 
words, each is imbued with the desire to make 
her individuality felt in the world. It is in the 
interest of this justifiable and laudable ambi- 
tion that I take my pen in hand to compose 
an answer. The constituency to which Numbers 
4 and 5 belong is large and constantly increas- 
ing. There are thousands of women without a 
grievance against Cupid whose bosoms are 
aching with the desire for identity, and it is 
to them, as represented by you, that I address 
myself. 

Your photographs, furnished as evidence of 
good faith in accordance with my requirements, 
lie before me as I write. Yours, Number 4 (the 
wife thoroughly happy in the wedded state), is 
suggestively typical of American womanhood. 
I have merely to utilize my mind's eye in order 
to behold you in the living flesh, tall, graceful, 
spare, and willowy; earnest and piquant in 
expression, with an air which suggests both 
the desire and the determination to accomplish 
[6a] 



w 



tth Social Ambitions 



great things, including no less a range than the 
probing of the secrets of the infinite, and the 
supplying of an ideal domestic dinner. Though 
willowy still, you have a plumper person than 
before you were married, and your face has 
lost the Amazonian tense look which it some- 
times wore when you were a maid. Your eyes 
are bright with happiness, and a shrewd humor 
plays about the corners of your mouth; hu- 
mor indicating, perhaps, that you find the 
world less sorry and more alluring than you 
did in the days when, grandly aspiring, but a 
little ignorant, cynical, and severe, you were 
waiting for an ideal lover to come and lift you 
from this humdrum, vulgar sphere to the 
stars. In other words, you have a drawing- 
room, such as it is, and a baby such as never 
was, and a husband whose faults (all of which 
you know) are more than balanced by his vir- 
tues, so that you are able to love him devot- 
edly with your eyes open, and thus preserve 
your self-respe6l as an intelligent modern, and 
yet satisfy that primal need of your nature, the 
capacity for adoring affedion. I see you thus 
in the living flesh, and I see you presently 
lost in engaging thought. You are saying to 

[63 ] 



To a Modern Woman 

yourself some such words as these: "Every- 
thing is running smoothly. Alexander's (hus- 
band's name) affairs are on a satisfa6tory finan- 
cial basis; baby is well, and has cut all her first 
teeth; the servants seem to be satisfied with 
us; and now is my chance to do something. 
What shall it be?" 

[Note. — "Give an afternoon tea," ejaculated 
Josephine, to whom I was reading what I had 
written.] 

I have no doubt that my wife is right. That 
is the first thing you would be likely to do. 
It is the never-failing resource of the young 
bride and the aged matron alike when pricked 
by the spur of social adtivity. Out go the cards 
of invitation, thin bread and butter is cut, and 
presently, on the appointed day, a file or a 
throng, according to weather and circum- 
stances, of petticoats goes into and from the 
house, and when the last skirt has disappeared 
you breathe a sigh of relief and self-congrat- 
ulation. "Thank heaven, that is over, and I 
can start afresh with a clear conscience and an 
ere6l head." Marvellous are the ways of the 
modern woman. It is thus that she settles with 
her social creditors and wins a tranquil soul. 

[64] 



w 



ith Social Ambitions 



What costs less subtle man canvas-back ducks 
and cases of wine is accomplished by the aid 
of a few tea-leaves and slices of thin bread and 
butter. And then her slate is clear, and she can 
afford to sink back for a decade into social 
greediness or inadlivity, as the case may be, 
proud and self-satisfied as a peacock. 

Her slate, not yours. Number 4. Mrs. Alex- 
ander Sherman let me call you by way of con- 
venience, for a mere number suggests convid: 
life. As Josephine has intimated, you would pro- 
bably begin with the tea, but the last visitor 
would leave you only temporarily exhilarated. 
Within a week carking, though praiseworthy, 
care would return, and you would be asking 
yourself, "What shall it be next.^" 

I hear some bluff and old-fashioned man 
exclaim, "Let her look after her husband and 
children, and attend to her domestic duties." 
Do not be concerned by this superficial jibe, 
dear madam. I am here to defend you, and I 
would be the last person in the world, to aid 
and abet your aspirations if I were not confi- 
dent that you are a thoroughly devoted wife 
and mother. Let me silence this stuffy censor 
at once by informing him that in the interest 

[65] 



To a Modern Woman 

of your baby you have familiarized yourself 
with the laws of hygiene and the latest theories 
of education, and that in no establishment 
among your contemporaries of equal means 
is a better or more punftual dinner served. 
If I did not believe this to be the case, I 
would have nothing more to do with you, 
philosophically speaking. 

I am taking for granted, too, that you are not 
nursing your social ambitions in the same nest 
with a faith in your own artistic genius. If you 
believe yourself to be an undiscovered queen 
of tragedy or an undeveloped poet or sculptor, 
or feel yourself inspired to write a novel or a 
play, please consider our correspondence at an 
end. In such a case, the rest of this letter is not 
for you. Not because I doubt your genius, but 
because I am certain that though artistic talent 
may continue to flourish in spite of a husband 
and a baby, it must inevitably languish and 
grow feeble when coupled as a running mate 
to a career of general, elegant, social usefulness 
such as I know you aspire to. If you possess 
artistic genius, or feel that you cannot be happy 
without testing your own talent in this resped:, 
be satisfied to give one afternoon tea, and then 
[66] 



with Social Afnbitions 

practically renounce social initiative, unless you 
are prepared to alienate your husband, negle6l 
your baby, or go to an asylum as a viftim of 
triple-distilled nervous prostration. Assuming, 
then, that you are simply eager to help in 
working out the problems and fulfilling the 
destinies of your native civilization with benefit 
to society and credit to yourself, I see you 
again in your drawing-room a few days after 
your preliminary tea, inquiring what you are 
to do next. I see, too, disporting themselves in 
your thought, the images of the brilliant wo- 
men of France of a century ago — such women 
as Madame de Stael, Madame Recamier, Ma- 
dame Roland, and others, who influenced af- 
fairs of state by their intelligence and social 
graces. It may be that they have been alike 
your inspiration and your despair. You would 
fain follow in their footsteps, but feel a washer- 
woman as compared with them. Your ambition 
does you credit, Mrs. Alexander Sherman, and 
also, begging your pardon, your humble-mind- 
edness. But there is no occasion for you to 
push either frame of mind to an extreme. In- 
deed, whether you be a washerwoman or not 
as compared with these ladies, they were not 

[67] 



TCo a Modern Woman 

altogether admirable. I am writing to you as a 
woman thoroughly happy in the wedded state. 
You will recolledt that of no one of those 
charming creatures could a similar statement 
be truthfully made. Madame Recamier's hus- 
band was three times her age. He offered, poor 
man, to consent to a divorce in order to allow 
his cherished wife to marry another; but she, 
out of pity for him in his adversity, for he had 
lost both royal favor and his estate, refused to 
take advantage of his magnanimity. Madame 
Roland told her husband, who was some twenty 
years her senior, her love for Buzot in order to 
protect herself from herself, and did not allow 
her feelings an outlet until, every possibility of 
meeting her lover having been removed by her 
death-sentence, she could express her passion 
without violation of duty. Very pretty be- 
havior, but not exadlly ideal marital relations, 
Mrs. Alexander Sherman. They should be 
taken into account in any comparison which 
you feel disposed to make between yourself 
and the ladies in question. 

And yet I would not have you fail to appre- 
ciate at their full worth the exquisiteness of the 
heroines of the French salons; the grace and 
[68] 



w 



ith Social Ambitions 



nicety of their manners, the briUiancy of their 
inteHigence, and the thoroughness of their ac- 
complishments. I have given you credit for re- 
curring to them instinctively as models of form, 
and I should grieve to think that my reference 
to your superior domestic happiness should 
lead you to think your humility amiss. Do you 
know the President of any woman's club who 
reminds you, by her grace, her nicety, her bril- 
liancy, and her thoroughness of what you im- 
agine Madame de Stael, or Madame Recamier, 
or Madame Roland to have been ? Possibly 
your patriotism, or even your sincere convic- 
tions, would induce you to answer this inquiry 
in the affirmative; and, indeed, I am ready to 
admit that we may have their counterparts 
among us; but certainly the country is not 
overrun with them, and I have no doubt that 
so discriminating a person as I imagine you to 
be will agree that the modern woman is often 
tempted to seek leadership on the strength of 
bumptiousness, smart ignorance, and that bust- 
ling spirit which those who possess it like to 
hear described as executive ability, instead of 
by virtue of the talents and graces of old aris- 
tocratic society. 

[69] 



To a Modern Woman 

I quite realize, on the other hand, that the 
conditions under which you live are very dif- 
erent from those which existed when the bril- 
liant and fascinating women whom I have speci- 
fied, and others resembling them, flourished. 
They were, of course, the quintessence of civi- 
lized society, a small coterie living in the at- 
mosphere of courts, seeking to control events 
by the force of their engaging personalities. I 
am writing to you, not as a member of a choice 
and seledl organization, from which most wo- 
men were excluded by reason of their nothing- 
ness, but as the representative of a large and 
growing constituency which is open, in theory 
at least, if not pradlically, to the whole world 
of womanhood. For us, certainly, courts and 
their atmosphere exist no longer, and the op- 
portunities afforded women by republican in- 
stitutions to influence the course of political 
events are slight; but in many respefts the 
outlook of modern woman upon life is essen- 
tially broader and no less interesting than the 
horizon of the mistress of the French salon. 
Of necessity it is less exclusive and more hu- 
manitarian, and by reason of the emancipation 
of woman as a social fador it includes consid- 

[70] 



with Social Ambitions 

eration of the whole range of educational, phil- 
anthropic, and aesthetic interests in which dem- 
ocratic civilization is concerned. It seems indeed 
a long cry from the piduresque experience of 
a clever and fascinating Madame de Stael, brav- 
ing the enmity of a Napoleon, or a Madame 
Roland reading her Tacitus and her Plutarch 
in the prison of St. Pelagie, to the nervous, 
bustling, afternoon-tea-frequenting, problem- 
hunting modern woman of workaday, social 
proclivities. And yet, I would not have you 
despair merely because your surroundings lack 
the color which irradiates their careers. To be 
different is not necessarily to be inferior. The 
influence of a noble and beautiful woman may 
be no less real and no less worthy of emulation 
in these days of comparatively humdrum world- 
stage effects and common conditions. But it 
will be just as well for you, whenever you are 
tempted to swell with conscious pride and to 
fancy yourself abnormally illustrious as a con- 
sequence — for instance, of being the President 
of a woman's club, or the triumphant promoter 
of some reform movement — to stop and whis- 
per to yourself " Madame de Stael," "Madame 
Recamier." 

[71 ] 



To A Modern Woman with 
Social Ambitions. II. 

^^^^^^O'TE. — My wife, Josephine, inter- 
n^ i\j ^^ posed again at this point. "I have 



been trying to make up my mind 
^^^^^^ while you were writing," said she, 
"what she would do next. I mean this Mrs. 
Alexander Sherman of yours, or whatever her 
real name is. That is, supposing she had never 
written to you and sent you her photograph, 
and she were left to her own devices. I can't 
blame her exadly for sending the photograph, 
because you make it a condition of the corre- 
spondence; but I can see from her face that she 
was glad of the opportunity, and that she hopes 
you will admire it." 

"Well, I have," said I. 

"Yes, and I agree with you in your enthu- 
siasm. She is handsome, and interesting look- 
ing, and ladylike. I was merely considering 
what she would be apt to do if she had no phi- 
losopher to advise her. She has a glad air as 
you have stated, indicating that she has no do- 
mestic or financial grievances, and I don't be- 
lieve she thinks herself an artistic genius or 

[70 



w 



ith Social Ambitions 



intends to write a novel, I think, though, that 
her first tea would elate her a little. She would 
be glad it was over, but surprised that so many 
people came. It would set her thinking, and 
presently she would give a dinner or two and 
a luncheon or so, and she would go to other 
teas and dinners and luncheons, and would 
gradually become the fashion, so that when her 
friends and acquaintances wished to entertain 
they would think instindively of Mr. and 
Mrs. Alexander Sherman. I am assuming, of 
course, that her husband is an amiable being 
and does not thwart her, and is willing to go 
to a reasonable number of entertainments. She 
would be pundilious about her calls, and make 
a point of appearing to remember people, even 
if she did n't have the least conception who 
they were, and would be generally blithe, tad- 
ful, and gracious. What is the matter, Mr. 
Philosopher? What would you have her do?" 
I had said nothing to induce this inquiry, but 
I suppose I must have writhed involuntarily. 

"I dare say it's all right. I don't see that 
she could help it; but it sounds conventional," 
I answered. 

"Of course it is conventional; yet, pray, 

[73] 



To a Modern Wo7nan 

how is she to avoid conventions ? I know you 
are thinking to yourself that the calls are a 
waste of time — all men, whether they are 
philosophers or not, think that. I agree with 
you that if she were content to shut herself 
up and be an artistic genius, or merely an 
everyday wife and mother without social ambi- 
tions, she could lead a sane and sufficiently 
exemplary life without ever owning a visiting 
card. Remember, though, that this Mrs. Sher- 
man of yours has social ambitions, and does 
not intend to hide her light under a bushel. 
I assume that she is too sensible to make her- 
self a mere slave to her visiting list, but if you 
intend to advise her not to call on people who 
have asked her to dinner, and not to pradlise the 
polite observances of civilized society all over 
the world, I wash my hands of her at the start, 
and hand her right over to you. Besides, I 'm 
only saying what I think from her face she 'd be 
likely to do. You can give her any instrudtions 
you please, and — and we '11 see if she follows 
them." 

" I have no doubt it *s necessary, if you say 
so," I answered, meekly. "I shall not venture 
to offer any radical advice on this point contrary 

[74] 



with Social Ambitions 

to your judgment. I was merely surmising that 
the modern woman would find a way to free her- 
self from the manacles of conventional call-pay- 
ing, which I have heard you yourself declare eat 
into the flesh and poison the joy of life." 

"I have said it in my weary moments," said 
Josephine, stoutly. "The modern woman uses 
her common-sense and does not let the man- 
acles hamper her movements; but she knows 
that she cannot reap social rewards without per- 
forming social duties. The modern woman is 
free, if she sees fit, to disdain social life and all 
its concomitants and shut herself up in a studio 
or a college settlement; it is her affair to decide 
what she wishes to do. But if she decides to be 
a social promoter and leader, she must continue 
to call on the people who invite her to dinner, 
or she is not likely to be asked again." 

"I am ready to accept the programme which 
you have laid out for my correspondent," I re- 
plied; "but I should like to know what you 
mean by social rewards." 

"I perceive from your tone, my dear philoso- 
pher, that you think I have in mind for your 
Mrs. Sherman merely a career of social frivolity. 
Nothing of the kind. I assure you that I appre- 

[75] 



To a Modern Woman 

date the seriousness of her intention no less 
clearly than you do. I desire to help the poor 
thing, not to pull her down. I was simply amus- 
ing myself by letting her do the things she would 
be likely to do if deprived of the benefit of your 
wisdom. But you need not be afraid that I un- 
derestimate her. Her teas, her dinners, and her 
luncheons are merely a stepping-stone toward 
higher usefulness. Of course, if she comes to 
grief without accomplishing anything, it will be 
her fault, not mine. I am giving her her head, 
and I trust to her not to lose her mental balance. 
Shall I go on ?" 

"Certainly," said I. "I am all attention." 
"She is pretty well known as a social figure 
by this time. She has more invitations than she 
can accept, and her name appears frequently in 
the newspapers as a guest at this and at that en- 
tertainment. She is invited to be a patroness of a 
series of subscription parties, which flatters her, 
and presently to be a patroness of college theat- 
ricals, and of a fair in aid of proletarian infants. 
It has been her intention to become earnestly 
interested in something worthy — the education 
of the blind, for instance — and she is trying to 
make up her mind what it shall be when she 

[76] 



with Social Ambitions 

begins to be deluged with applications to take 
an interest in all sorts of things, educational, 
literary, and philanthropic. She receives by the 
same mail a request to be present at a meeting 
to promote the moral and hygienic welfare of 
prisoners, and a notice that she has been eleded 
a Vice-President of the American Mothers' Kin- 
dergarten Association. The next day an author 
asks for the use of her name for a reading to be 
given ^under the auspices of leading society wo- 
men.' One evening the servant brings up a card 
inscribed Miss Madeline Pollard. 'Who is Miss 
Madeline Pollard ?' she asks herself perplexedly. 
She concludes that it must be one of the educa- 
tional or philanthropic people she has met of 
late; then a sudden flush rises to her cheeks, a 
flush of half-amused, half-indignant excitement. 
'Nonsense, it can't be,' she murmurs; then with 
a stealthy glance at her husband, but without a 
word to him, she goes down to meet the visitor. 
She finds a free-spoken and insinuating young 
woman with an air of pathos. I will give you 
their conversation, philosopher." (Here is the 
dialogue as detailed to me by Josephine.) 

Visitor. Mrs. Alexander Sherman, I believe ? 

[77] 



To a Modern JVoman 

Mrs. Sherman (with dignity). That is my 
name. 

Visitor. Though we have never met, your per- 
son is so familiar to me, that I have taken the 
hberty of calling. I have admired you at a dis- 
tance for nearly two years, and I feel sure that 
you will not refuse me the privilege of knowing 
you in your home and among your domestic 
associations. May I sit down ? 

Mrs. Sherman. Certainly. You have come — 
er — I don't understand exadly. 

Visitor. With your permission to ask you a 
few questions — to obtain an interview. 

Mrs. Sherman (with a manifestation of alarm). 
You are a reporter ? An interview for a news- 
paper ? Oh, I could n't consent on any account. 
I shouldn't like anything of the kind at all. You 
must excuse me. 

Visitor ( saccharinely ) . I should not think of 
publishing anything contrary to your wishes. 

Mrs. Sherman. It would be quite impossible. 
My husband would be very much annoyed. 
Besides, it would be so ridiculous. I have noth- 
ing to say. 

Visitor. Mr. Sherman is such a distinguished- 
looking man. I admire iron-gray hair and mus- 

[78] 



with Social Ambitions 

taches. Indeed, every one would be very much 
interested in anything you were to say. You are 
a woman of ideas — a progressive woman. The 
pubhc is interested in progressive women, and 
I think such women owe it to the public to let 
them understand and appreciate them. 

Mrs. Sherman. But I 'm only a private indi- 
vidual. It might be different if I were an author 
or other public character; though I don't ap- 
prove at all of people who parade themselves 
and their ideas in the newspapers. There ! I have 
hurt your feelings. 

Visitor (with her air of pathos). No, dear lady. 
I 'm only a little discouraged. If the public wish 
to know and progressive people refuse to tell 
them, what becomes of the reporter who is 
obliged to furnish copy and to obey orders ? 

Mrs. Sherman. It is a hard life, I 'm sure. But 
— but, if I 'm not impertinent — 

Visitor (interrupting). You 're going to ask 
how I came to take it up as a profession. Yes, 
it is hard; but I glory in it (proudly ). I 'm not 
ashamed of it. It 's a progressive life, too. But 
it is a little discouraging at times (sadly ). You 
have such a lovely home, Mrs. Sherman; ele- 
gance without ostentatious display; taste every- 

[79] 



To a Modern Wo^nan 

where without extravagance. I should so like to 
describe it. 

Mrs. Sherman. Oh, but you mustn't. Were 
you ordered to — er — write about me .f* 

Visitor. Yes, dear lady. You are to be one of 
a series — "Half-hour Chats with our Progres- 
sive Women," that 's the title. 

Mrs. Sherman. Have you — er — been to see 
any one else ? 

Visitor. Yes, and they all felt as you did at 
first (she enumerates the names of three or four other 
modern women with social ambitions ) . 

Mrs. Sherman. And did they all consent to 
talk to you ? 

Visitor. Every one, and they all gave me their 
photographs. 

Mrs. Sherman (faintly). Photographs ? You 
don't mean that you wish a photograph ? That 
would be too dreadful. 

Visitor (soothingly). You wouldn't wish to 
mar the completeness of the series. People like 
to see those who talk to them. 

Mrs. Sherman. But I have nothing to say to 
them. 

Visitor. Leave that to me. You have spoken 
already. Everything about you speaks — your 

[80] 



with Social Ambitions 

face, your personal belongings, your household 
usages. While I have been sitting here I have 
observed a host of things which talk eloquently 
of your ideas, your principles, and your tastes. 
Just the things the pubhc thirst to know about 
a woman like you. Leave it all to me. I will 
write it out and send you the proof, and, if it 
isn't just right, you can alter it to suit yourself 
(blithely). And the photograph ? 

Mrs. Sherman. Must I ? 

Visitor ( firmly and boldly ) . Public people think 
nothing of that nowadays. It's a matter of course. 
You would have had a right to feel offended if I 
had n't included you in my article. You would n't 
have been pleased, would you now, to see inter- 
views with other progressive women, and your 
face and personality excluded ? Just look at it in 
that light. It is disagreeable to me to intrude and 
force my way, and invade privacy, but I have a 
duty to the public to perform, and from that 
point of view I count on you to help me. 

Mrs. Sherman. Perhaps I ought. Er — would 
you like it now ? 

Visitor. If you please. 

(Mrs. Sherman goes upstairs and returns pre- 
sently with a choice of photographs.) 
[8. ] 



T^o a Modern Woman 

Visitor, They are both exquisite. I choose 
this one for my article, and, if you don't objed:, 
I should like so much to keep the other for 
myself as a memento of this delightful inter- 
view. May I, dear lady ? 

Mrs. Sherman. If you wish it. 

Visitor. Thank you. And there is one thing 
more. Please write your name on both. An au- 
tograph adds so much to the value of a photo- 
graph whether it be for the public eye or the 
album of a friend. 

Mrs. Sherman (resignedly). What shall I 
write ? 

Visitor. Oh, anything. "Yours faithfully," or 
"Very cordially yours," are very popular just at 
present. Thank you so much. And I do hope to 
meet you soon again. If I should happen to give 
a little tea at my rooms for Mr. Hartney Collier, 
the ador, later in the winter, I shall take the 
liberty of sending you a card. You would like 
him so much. And now, goodby, dear lady. Kxit. 

I have given this conversation without the 
various comments and interjections made either 
by myself or Josephine during the course of it. 
To have set them forth would merely have 

[ 8^] 



with Social Ambitions 

served to mar the sequence of the dialogue. 
After announcing the departure of the visitor, 
there was a httle pause and my wife regarded 
me almost pathetically. 

" Poor thing ! " she murmured, brushing away 
the semblance of a tear with her pocket-hand- 
kerchief. " I am sorry for her. I can understand 
just how it happened." 

"For which of the two are you sorry?" I 
asked. 

"I meant for your woman. But I 'm sorry 
for them both. It almost seems like fate. The 
whole thing is disgusting, but the times are to 
blame. The pubhc encourages the reporter and 
the interview, and when a woman is told that she 
is progressive, and that it is her duty to make 
herself felt still more, I can imagine her being 
goaded into it if she is the sort of woman your 
woman is. I suppose you think I 've ruined her. I 
did n't mean to; I merely gave her her head, and 
that 's what she did. I will hand her over to you 
now, and you can do what you like with her." 

"Excuse me, Josephine. She is your creation. 
I should n't think of interfering at this stage. 
You have taken her in hand and you must work 
out her destiny for her." 

[83] 



To a Modern JVoman 

"You mean let her work out her own des- 
tiny. That 's all I was doing. I see your point; 
and, if you won't take her back, I 'm willing to 
give her her head to the end. I 'm interested 
in her, and I don't despair of her at all, in spite 
of the fad: that you have washed your hands of 
her. I shall have to think a little before I give 
her her head again." 

Hereupon Josephine assumed an attitude of 
reflection. When she began to speak presently, 
her words and manner suggested the demeanor 
of a trance medium, or seer — as though she 
were peering into the abyss of the future. 

"The interview appears, and her husband is 
less disturbed than she expeds. He declares 
that the press portrait is an abomination and 
libellous, but he admits that the text is consid- 
erately done for a newspaper interview, and that, 
barring a few inaccuracies and a little exaggera- 
tion due to poetic license, she is made to appear 
less of a fool than she had a right to expe6t. 
This cheers and encourages her, and helps to 
allay the consciousness that the publication of 
her face and doings was purely a gratuitous ad- 
vertisement. She firmly resolves that she will 
reform and live up to the description of her, 

[84] 



with Social Ambitions 

and she resolves to devote herself to a more 
definite field of acflion. Accordingly, after delib- 
eration, she rejed:s the case of the blind, and 
decides to take up the problem of how to make 
humble homes attractive by simple art. She buys 
a complete edition of Ruskin, and writes to a 
half-dozen prominent men and as many women 
for the use of their names as a nucleus for a club 
to be known as "The Home Beautifying So- 
ciety." A meeting is held, and she is eledled 
President and a member of the Executive Com- 
mittee, fads of which the public is duly informed 
by her pathetic newspaper admirer. There, phi- 
losopher, you see she is doing something serious 
already." 

"You are incorrigible, Josephine," I asserted. 

"She means so well, poor dear," my wife con- 
tinued with a genuinely worried air. "She fully 
intends to devote herself to that society and 
make it a success, and she does so for a few 
weeks. Indeed, she raises money enough to em- 
ploy a superintendent, and through him to give 
an exhibition of a poor man's house as it ought 
to be furnished, and by way of speaking con- 
trast a poor man's house as it is too apt to be 
furnished when he has money enough to furnish 

[ 85] 



To a Modern Woman 

it gaudily. And then she helps get out the an- 
nual report, which mentions progress, and shows 
a balance of $1.42 in the treasury, which leads 
her to make the announcement that in order to 
insure the successful continuation of a move- 
ment calculated to serve as a potent aesthetic in- 
fluence among the unenlightened, the liberal 
contributions made by friends must be renewed 
in the fall. And then, there are so many other 
things she has to do. Just listen, philosopher, 
to what the poor thing has become in less than 
a year since her life appeared in the newspaper, 
and tell me what she is to do. 

§ I. Second Vice-President of the American 
Cremation Society. 

§ 2. Member of Text Committee of the So- 
ciety to Improve the Morals of Persons Under- 
going Sentence. 

§ 3. Chairman of the Inspeding Committee 
of the Sterilized Milk Association. 

§ 4. Vice-President of the American Mothers* 
Kindergarten Association. 

§ 5. Life member of Society to Pro ted the In- 
dians. 

§ 6. Honorary member of the Press Women's 
Social and Beneficent Club. 
[86] 



with Social Ambitions 

§ 7. Member of the Forty Associates Sewing 
Bee (luncheon club). 

§ 8. Third Vice-President of the Woman's 
Club, and a6live participator in the following 
courses of original work arranged by the mem- 
bers of the Club: 
{a) Literary Course for 1897-98. 
Shakespeare's Women. 
The Dramatists of the Elizabethan Period. 
{h) Scientific Course for 1897-98. 
Darwin's Theory of Earth-worms. 
The present Status of the Conflict between 

Science and Religion. 

Recent Polar Expeditions. 

{c) Political Course for 1897-98. 

The Tariff Bills of American History. 
The Theory of Bimetallism. 
§ 9. Member of The Moliere Club. (Class 
to read French plays one evening a fortnight.) 
§ 10. President of the Home Beautifying So- 
ciety. (Her pet interest.) 

§ 1 1. To say nothing of dinner parties, recep- 
tions, ladies* luncheons, the opera, concerts, au- 
thors' readings, and other more or less engross- 
ing social diversions and distradions. 

"There!" continued Josephine. "And this 

[87] 



T^o a Modern Woman 

does not include the thought and worry she 
spends upon Mrs. J. Webb Johnston." 

"And who, pray, is Mrs. J. Webb John- 
ston ?" I asked. 

"Her fascinating, deadly, and demoralizing 
rival," answered Josephine, with a mournful 
wag of the head. " I am really very sorry, my 
dear philosopher, that this fresh complication 
has appeared, for I really think your Mrs. Sher- 
man had all she could attend to already. But I 
must be faithful to the truth, even though our 
cherished hopes are thereby frustrated. Must n't 
I, philosopher?" 

"Certainly," said I; "but since you instead 
of me seem to be writing this letter, I suggest 
that it is time to give our correspondents time 
to breathe by beginning a fresh paragraph." 



[88] 



To A Modern Woman with 
Social Ambitions. III. 



J 



j)UST as you men — merchants, law- 
j yers, or dodiors — " pursued Jose- 
phine, reflediively, "deliberately or 
«^ti^(^' unconsciously contrast yourselves 
with your fellows in the same calling and be- 
come friendly rivals yet competitors for success 
and renown, it seems to be inevitable that the 
modern woman with social ambitions should 
keep her eye on other modern women with so- 
cial ambitions and try to make sure that they 
do not get ahead of her. Your Mrs. Sherman, 
at the time the newspaper woman visited her, 
had reached the point where it would naturally 
occur to her to scan the horizon to observe how 
the other feminine celebrities of her environment 
were progressing, and her attention was espe- 
cially called to the matter by the article on * Pro- 
gressive Women.' There she had the opportu- 
nity to behold them in their respe6tive glories, 
and to be jealous of or indifferent to them, ac- 
cording to her judgment as to what each 
amounted to. It was an interesting list, and she 
experienced in perusing it, in conjundion with 

[89] 



To a Modern Woman 

the portraits, some qualms of mild envy on ac- 
count of several of the progressionists, but the 
only face and career which really discouraged 
her were the face and career of the woman I 
have referred to, Mrs. J. Webb Johnston, or, 
as every one calls her, Mrs. Webb Johnston. 

"When she had finished she felt herself es- 
sentially on a par with the others; but in the 
case of Mrs. Webb Johnston she experienced 
a frog in her throat, and she looked into dis- 
tance with a harassed air for more than five 
minutes. Mrs. Webb Johnston was not a stran- 
ger to her, but she was comparatively a nov- 
elty. That is, she had appeared on the social 
stage since Mrs. Sherman herself had become 
prominent, and had been making mushroom- 
like progress; such rapid progress in fad: that 
it was only when she read the text of the arti- 
cle that she realized the extent of it. Then it 
came over her with a rush that she was in peril 
of being distanced on her own ground. For, to 
all intents and purposes, they were rivals. 
Their visiting lists were pra6lically the same; 
they represented and appealed to the same con- 
stituency. In personal appearance she could 
not justly claim anv superiority to Mrs. Webb, 

[9°] 



with Social Ambitions 

who was at least three years her junior in age, 
and who possessed a certain luscious, Juno-like 
beauty which was calculated, without question, to 
dazzle undiscriminating eyes, and which would 
not be regarded except by the very subtle as 
inferior in type to her own refined effective- 
ness. Yes, there was no doubt about Mrs. 
Webb's physical charms, or her great executive 
ability, or her enthusiastic devotion to the en- 
tire range of interests over which she herself 
was aiming to hold undisputed sway. Her own 
ambition was to be the guiding spirit, the mod- 
ern, original social force above all other modern 
social forces in her constituency; yet here was 
another with an evidently similar ambition, and 
a war-cry or shibboleth which was disconcert- 
ingly fetching. I trust you have appreciated, 
philosopher, that our Mrs. Sherman (I am 
really sorry for her now, so I call her ^our'), 
from the very first, has been decorously con- 
servative in her point of view, eschewing cheap 
and vagabond devices and adhering to elegant 
and appropriately conventional usages, such as 
seemed to befit a conscientious woman eager 
to lead public opinion. If dignified conserva- 
tism has been her ruling motive, you will read- 

[91 ] 



To a Modern Woman 

ily appreciate that it would disturb her to find 
that a Bohemian looseness of social vision dis- 
tinguished her rival, who had been working 
her way to the front by the specious cry of 
* liberty,' and a sedudively expressed intention 
of freeing the community from the manacles of 
old fogy conventions. I am sure you will agree, 
philosopher, that it is natural she should have 
been worried, or, at least, distraded from set- 
tling down to her *Art in Humble Homes' by 
this discovery. And investigation and refledlion 
only serve to agitate her still further; for, as 
the weeks go by, it becomes more and more 
obvious that the things indicated in the article 
are true — that Mrs. Webb Johnston is hand in 
glove with authors, ad:ors, opera-singers, and 
other celebrities, and that the entertainments 
which she gives and the conversation heard 
there lack the dull, cut-and-dried, mechanical 
flavor observable at ordinary social gatherings. 
You see the situation, don't you, dear?" 

(As Josephine's prophecy has assumed an 
essay-like or argumentative form, it does not 
seem to me advisable to interrupt its flow for 
my correspondents by reciting our side obser- 
vations, unless they would be material or elu- 

[92] 



with Social Ainhitions 

cidating. Although her appropriation of my 
Mrs. Sherman has proved to be a kidnapping 
of a very serious charadler, and her conversa- 
tion is bracketed as a " note," still her remarks 
seem to me so pertinent that I am prepared to 
adopt them as a part of my letter.) 

"The most perplexing thing, philosopher, for 
a modern woman with social ambitions who 
wishes to emulate Madame Recamier or Ma- 
dame de Stael, is that we have no standards in 
this country. Public opinion is the only test of 
condud:. The progressive woman is expeded 
on the one hand to be original, and yet on the 
other to guide corredly, and public opinion 
reserves the right to follow blindly and to ap- 
plaud egregiously and afterward to condemn 
the leaders whom it has flattered into folly. An 
ambitious woman (or a man, for the matter of 
that) needs to-day a clear head, a high sense 
of responsibility, and a sense of humor if she 
or he would avoid being led astray by the will- 
o'-the-wisp crew of surface society livers which 
pursues talent and originality only to be amused, 
and who, provided it is amused, forgives every- 
thing else, and eggs the performer on to believe 
that its shallow approval is the real verdidl of 

[93] 



To a Modern Woman 

society. This crew, brought into being by mere 
wealth, lacking purpose and sneering at it if it 
threatens to interfere with the progress of the 
merry-go-round, and backed by the army of 
society reporters and tittle-tattlers, is a growing 
fadlor in our large cities and serves to debauch 
public sentiment by more and more audacious 
or frivolous ventures concerning the orthodoxy 
of which it claims to be the only intelligent judge. 
We are accustomed to sneer at the formal and 
confining conventions of older civilizations on 
the ground that liberty of adion is thereby 
checked and life made artificial, but are we not 
beginning to discover that there are advantages 
in a definite prescription as to what gentlemen 
and ladies can do as compared with a happy-go- 
lucky system of individual competition in social 
experiments which, however vulgar and demor- 
alizing, are invariably puffed and glorified by the 
social gossip editors of a host of newspapers? 
The subsequent course of Mrs. Sherman's ca- 
reer is an illustration of the plight in which a 
modern woman with social ambitions is liable to 
find herself as a result of the democratic habit 
of constituting the half-educated and often mor- 
ally obtuse society reporter, her successors and 

[94] 



with Social Ambitions 

assigns, the sole arbiter of what is socially ele- 
gant and invigorating. 

"Setting aside the matter of the ethics of her 
egotism, our lady in question is animated by a 
conscientious desire to be a refining and admir- 
able influence. It is her ambition to lead, but to 
lead nobly and unimpeachably. Her entertain- 
ments and her posture in and toward society 
have been pursued on this principle, and she has 
believed the effedl produced by her to be irre- 
proachable intelledual elegance, redeemed from 
formalism or dullness by scintillating vivacity. 
The suggestion, therefore, that she is behind 
the times gives her a genuine shock. She has 
hitherto prided herself on her mental acumen 
and on her knowingness. She has considered 
that she knew life to the dregs, so to speak, for 
she had passed through a course of French, and 
translated Russian novels, and acquired thereby 
a knowledge of things evil, which she kept 
stored in her inner consciousness as a source 
of pride and an antidote against undue prim- 
ness in matters sexual and social. She begins to 
ask herself if it can possibly be true that she is 
an old fogy, and lacks breadth of view, and that 
society in its demands for liberty of condud and 

[95] 



To a Modern Woman 

agreeable entertainment is prepared to discard, 
as outworn and futile, conventions and limita- 
tions which she has been disposed to consider 
essential to civilized and decent deportment. As 
the result of this reasoning she resolves to cap 
her rival's next venture with something of her 
own. So it happens that not long after Mrs. 
Webb Johnston has summoned a few seled 
spirits to sup and witness Miss'Almira Wing, 
a visiting coryphee, do a skirt dance, Mrs. Sher- 
man issues notes of invitation to what is mys- 
teriously specified as * An Eclipse Smoke Talk.' 
This proves to be a small gathering of choice 
souls to observe a total eclipse of the moon due 
at two o'clock in the morning from her own 
roof, and to listen to remarks by a leading as- 
tronomer secured for the occasion. This enter- 
tainment is a success, and serves to give her 
new heart. It was bold, still decent. She has pre- 
served her self-resped:, yet shown herself alive 
to the necessity of being original. She is prompt 
to reinforce it by an evening with a Russian 
Nihilist, a young woman reputed to have been 
prominent in plots to assassinate the Czar, and 
who makes a specialty of narrating her experi- 
ences after a Welsh rabbit, cigarette in mouth. 

[96] 



with Social Ambitions 

Naturally, these enterprises spur Mrs. Webb 
Johnston to fresh efforts of the imagination. 
Her guests are beguiled at her next evening by 
a paper on *Life among the Mormons,' deliv- 
ered by one of the early female disciples of that 
community. No men are invited on this occasion. 
A fortnight later a very small and secretly in- 
vited company are bidden to behold an exhibi- 
tion of the vagaries of a hypnotic patient. 

"This enlargement of her horizon, though 
stimulating, puts Mrs. Sherman on tenter- 
hooks. It becomes necessary for her to keep 
accurately posted as to the comings of celebri- 
ties in order to get the first *go' at them, so to 
speak, before they fall into the clutches of her 
rival. As a consequence, aspirants in every line 
of art or accomplishment who desire to win the 
patronage of the public ask for the use of her 
name and receive it. She had been nervous and 
over-occupied before, but now her days are 
passed in a ferment. She has recourse to tonics 
and to sleeping draughts. She feels elated at the 
success of her enfranchisement, but a feverish 
interest as to what Mrs. Webb Johnston will do 
next keeps her uneasy. Nor has she forgotten 
her serious intentions. She tries to assure her- 

[97] 



To a Modern Woman 

self that her progressiveness Is for the benefit 
of society, and that she is leading it in noble di- 
redions. She still retains her scruples. She draws 
the line on women celebrities of unchaste life. In 
this she refuses to be led astray by her rival's 
pradices. Mrs. Webb Johnston's openly avowed 
theory had been that where art was concerned, 
she chose to ask no questions. Accordingly, she 
took to her bosom, socially, any one who was 
brilliant or attradive; and every notoriously erot- 
ic a6tress, singer, dancer, or other artist whose 
talent had caught the public fancy was invited 
to her house, and became privileged on very 
short acquaintance to kiss her and call her by 
her first name. 

"Mrs. Sherman's conscience obliges her to 
draw this line, but she is conscious that it is an 
inconvenience to do so, which puts her at a dis- 
advantage. Mrs. Webb Johnston has merely to 
swoop down on the hotel, or insinuate herself 
behind the scenes, and off^er her visiting card, 
and presently her cheek, in order to carry oflF 
the prize. She cannot but feel that there are ad- 
vantages in the Bohemian democratic point of 
view which asks no questions, but takes the good 
without heeding the ill. 

[98] 



with Social Ambitions 

"By refusing social recognition to women 
whose private characters are disreputable, she is 
shutting herself off from alluring friendships 
with sopranos, contraltos, tragediennes, skirt- 
dancers, music-hall singers, and many other bril- 
liant and fascinating creatures whose presence at 
her house could not fail to make her entertain- 
ments interesting to her guests. All these women 
are sought out and cherished by Mrs. Webb 
Johnston. 

"The old adage that there are other ways of 
killing a cat than choking her with cream, comes 
pertinently to mind in this connexion. Con- 
science is apt to be a tyrant if deliberately over- 
ridden, but it may be hoodwinked with compar- 
ative complacency. Mrs. Sherman remains true 
to her principle of excluding meretricious char- 
aders from social intercourse with her guests, 
but she reserves to herself the right of passing 
on the evidence. Seeing that she had read Ma- 
dame Bovary and Anna Karenina, was she not 
amply qualified to deted immorality at first 
blush ? That seemed to be almost an essential 
attribute of a modern woman with social ambi- 
tions. 

"The occasion for putting into pradice this 

[99] 



T^o a Modern Woman 

prerogative was not far to seek. The arrival from 
Europe of one of the most brilliant of the gal- 
axy of foreign actresses brings her heart into her 
mouth. She reads eagerly everything which the 
newspapers have to say about her, and naturally 
finds nothing there suggestive of impropriety. 
She buys and scans photographs, and these 
merely serve to heighten the ideal estimate 
which has shaped itself in her mind. She re- 
fuses to entertain sundry rumors which have 
reached her to the effed: that the lady in ques- 
tion has been successively maintained by a 
French marquis, and a Russian banker, and was 
at present reputed to be on unduly intimate 
terms with the famous leading man of her own 
troupe. To the person who has confided to her 
these whisperings she answers, *I don't believe 
a word of it,' and then adds, significantly, * Wait.' 
The person is a man, and he shrugs his shoul- 
ders. But her soul is jubilant in its faith and in 
the hope that at last she has found a way to com- 
pete with Mrs. Webb Johnston. 

"On the day when the adress arrives in town 

Mrs. Sherman goes to see her. The meeting is 

by appointment at ten o'clock in the morning, 

and lasts more than two hours. They come down- 

[ lOO ] 



with Social Ambitions 

stairs together with the mien of happy sisters. 
Mrs. Sherman's face wears a seraphic smile. Her 
carriage is in waiting, and in it they are driven 
to her home for luncheon, and on the same even- 
ing cards are issued for an after-theatre supper- 
party as a preliminary announcement of impend- 
ing festivities. She sends for the man who told 
her the rumors, and in a triumphant tone says, 
* My friend, your stories are untrue; I have been 
to headquarters. I have seen her and asked her, 
and she has assured me, with tears in her eyes, 
that they are a wicked falsehood — a malicious, 
baseless slander.' 

" * Surely,' says the man, *she ought to know,' 
and then he shrugs his shoulders again, a caus- 
tic ad: which, though done as a friend, provokes 
Mrs. Sherman to anger, and puts a chasm be- 
tween them. 

"On this day the cat is killed, and yet the 
cream is saved. True to her principles, Mrs. 
Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton, 
yet never fails to convince herself that she is an 
infallible judge of virtue. If there are rumors 
and whisperings in advance, she invariably takes 
the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, 
by the horns and puts the inquiry. The answer 

[ io« ] 



To a Modern Woman 

settles the matter. It becomes a veritable *open 
sesame' to her entertainments and her friend- 
ship. She shows herself in public with her arm, 
metaphorically and literally, around the waist of 
women whom all men know to be unchaste and 
living in violation of social laws. They kiss and 
talk poetry and art and philosophy, and her 
face gleams with the consciousness of new im- 
portance and the realization of her ambition. 

"Mrs. Sherman has now reached the point 
where she feels that she can fairly regard herself 
as the most busily progressive woman of her 
community. She has a finger in every pie, liter- 
ary, artistic, philanthropic, educational, and what 
not. She is always in a hurry, and she does noth- 
ing thoroughly. Her ideas jostle against each 
other in their promiscuity, and become all jum- 
bled together in her consciousness. Her time is 
so occupied that when she is doing one thing 
and talking to one person, some other thing or 
person is in her mind, though her social skill 
often enables her to conceal the fad. Her life is 
one continuous series of kaleidoscopic sensations 
and emotions without system or result. She is 
ostensibly a leader, but her leadership suggests 
only ceaseless aftivity and indiscriminate, super- 
[ I02 ] 



with Social Ambitions 

ficial posings and vanities. Her nerves are kept 
in a constant state of tension by breathless com- 
ings and goings, her digestion perpetually tried 
by the viands of festivities. Nor is her conscience 
satisfied. A vague unrest pursues her still, tor- 
turing her by insinuations of her own utter fu- 
tility, yet goading her on to fresh efforts. She 
presently becomes a wreck morally, mentally, 
and physically, though she preserves a bold front 
to the world, until one day the news is flashed 
upon a busy public that she has died suddenly 
from ' heart failure ' following an attack of pneu- 
monia. The physician in attendance shakes his 
head when asked to give assurance of her recov- 
ery. He possesses an instindiive knowledge that 
she has kept her vitality keyed up to concert 
pitch by antipyrine, phenacetine, and the other 
drugs to the use of which modern progressive 
women are addided. And so no more of Mrs. 
Alexander Sherman. 

"Of course," continued Josephine, "it was 
not stridlly necessary to kill her. The constitu- 
tions of some progressive women seem to be 
proof against anything. But the chances were in 
favor of her death. And if the poor thing had 
lived, what hope was there for anything but a 

[ 103 ] 



To a Modern Woman 

vapid old age, haunted by visions of her decreas- 
ing notoriety ? And the strangest part of all is 
that when I began with her I felt hopeful that 
she would amount to something. The laws of 
evolution are not to be trifled with, however, 
even by the wives of philosophers." 



[ 104 ] 



To A Modern Woman with 
Social Ambitions. IV. 

l^C^I^ FEEL confident that my correspon- 
|M* J |M» dent, Number 4, a wife thoroughly 
m^ w «^ happy in the wedded state, will ap- 
5^^^li^ preciate that there was nothing per- 
sonal in Josephine's portrayal of Mrs. Alexander 
Sherman's career. It seems to me that it pre- 
sents, more clearly than any arguments or words 
of mine could do, the perils of egotism and super- 
ficiality, and that I need not further indicate to 
my correspondents that to do a little of every- 
thing and nothing thoroughly, to be so eager 
for individuality or notoriety that one is ready 
to be led instead of to lead, and to discard social 
canons on the plea of liberty or superior femi- 
nine acuteness, will produce a nervous, emo- 
tional, gibbering type of charader adapted to 
cause Madame de Stael or Madame Recamier 
to turn in her grave. Neither you. Number 4, 
nor Number 5, the radiant, able-bodied spinster, 
haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers, 
need fear any detriment to your souls or to your 
social progress as a consequence of doing some 
one or two things well, and of refusing to sacri- 

[105] 



To a Modern Wo7nan 

ficeyour self-resped: to the urgency of cheap sub- 
stitutes for refinement and elegance. Certainly, 
thoroughness and delicacy of thought and sen- 
timent are essential to the modern woman who 
would be socially effedive in the best sense. 

Let me here state that I am entirely conscious 
that it is not a prerequisite to earnest living to 
be socially effedlive at all. One can pursue one's 
occupation, be it house-keeping, school teaching, 
scientific philanthropy, or novel writing without 
taking any part in what is known as society, and 
still be respedable and worthy in character. Yet 
if every woman were simply to eat her three 
meals a day, sleep, be afFe6tionate to her family, 
reasonably charitable, and do her daily task, the 
world would lose much of its vivacity, color, 
and aesthetic interest. As the world is at present 
constituted the greater mass of human beings, 
both male and female, are shut off from partici- 
pation in society in its narrower sense. Their 
means, their manner of living, and their tastes 
confine them to very simple or else to very 
coarse social diversions. Hence we are accus- 
tomed to read in the newspapers of "society 
people," as a term of reproach indicating that 
portion of the population which cultivates the 

[ 106] 



with Social A?nhitions 

social or aesthetic side of nature in its leisure 
hours. The demagogic force of the term is de- 
rived from the undeniable existence of a surface 
element of society, which has been and is still 
apt to condu(5t itself in such a manner as to sub- 
ject itself justly to the charge of frivolity and 
extravagance. But the unthinking extend its ap- 
plication to the cultivated and intelligent many, 
who in all countries constitute the best force of 
the community. Society in this better sense must 
always exist, and, although the woman who holds 
herself aloof from it may not be distindlly culpa- 
ble, there can be no question that those who suc- 
ceed in participating in the social interests open 
to them, without negleding or allowing them to 
obscure sterner pursuits, live finer and more ser- 
viceable lives than those who pass all their hours 
of relaxation by the chimney-corner, either be- 
cause they fancy that essential to comfort or be- 
cause they choose to despise what they call, with 
a virtuous infledlion, "society." 

This may sound elementary, but I present it 
as a premise to what is to follow. You, my cor- 
respondents, are ambitious to progress socially, 
yet doubtless you are not altogether impervious 
to the seductive suggestion that social interests 
[ 107 ] 



'To a Modern Woman 

are hollow and unprofitable. For instance, I feel 
sure that you, Number 5, the radiant, able-bod- 
ied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love 
and lovers, feels the pressure of the times, and 
would regard the life of a Madame de Stael or a 
Madame Recamier, however brilliant or pictur- 
esque, as at variance with modern theories of so- 
cial utility. I hear you making some such repre- 
sentation as this, which is merely an enlargement 
of the letter you wrote me: " Here am I, a young 
woman of some means, without family respon- 
sibilities or other demands upon my time. I 
have no prejudice against marriage; indeed, I 
earnestly hope to meet some day, some man 
who will love me and whom I may love, and 
whose wife I may become; but as I am no 
longer so young as I was once, being nearly 
thirty, I have no intention of bothering my 
head about the subjed: further, and so put it 
aside as a contingency. I have no special talent; 
that is, I never could accomplish anything un- 
usual with my voice, my pen, or a brush. I 
have taken, and I do take, a strong interest in 
charitable enterprise and investigation. I belong 
to philanthropic societies, and it has more than 
once occurred to me to join a college settlement 
[ >o8 ] 



with Social Ambitions 

and live among the poor. I have friends who 
do that; but I do not feel a special fitness for 
the work. Nor am I sure that, however valu- 
able that experience may be as a form of loving 
service to the people one hopes to influence, it 
can be other than episodic and limited to the 
individuals who are conscious of the need or of 
the inspiration. I am painfully aware of the dis- 
sipations and vanities of fashionable people, in 
many of which I have taken part myself, and 
have no desire to be merely a frivolous devotee 
of social amusements. And yet I feel sure that 
the social side is no less genuine in its claims 
upon us than any other. It seems to me that I 
might interest myself socially, but I am puzzled 
by the intricacies of the situation. It is so difficult 
to be democratic in one's sympathies and yet 
maintain the old standards of elegance and re- 
finement. To be socially eff'ed:ive one ought to be 
in touch with modern social tendencies and yet 
be true to the finest instinds of aspiring woman- 
hood. What can one do to realize this ?" 

That is, I believe, a clear presentation of your 

state of mind and its dilemma. Having read of 

the vicissitudes of Mrs. Alexander Sherman, 

you have probably a more distindt idea of what 

[ 109 ] 



T^o a Modern Woman 

you ought not to do; but would have a right to 
argue that a mere warning loses half its force 
unless a substitute be supplied. To begin with, 
you are corred: in your assumption — ^you see I 
credit you with a considerable intelligence — that 
if you hope to be efFed;ive you must not be con- 
tent with mere aristocratic elegance. That is a 
requisite which will gain you a standing within 
certain narrow limits, and if cleverly cherished, 
may bring you a surface reputation which the 
society newspapers will vie with each other to 
enhance. The acquirement of mere fine ladyism 
is going on adively in our society, and though 
it has not turned the heads of so many Amer- 
ican women as its opposite, superficial demo- 
cratic smartness, it seems too apt to fill the 
breasts of its votaries with a pleasing self-satis- 
fadion, which no suggestion that the gift is not 
original serves to disturb. It is a produd: of and 
inheritance from the older civilizations, and in 
its most precious but not its exaggerated form, 
is absolutely essential to the most highly evolved 
womanhood. A fringe of our people in the North 
and in the South, and latterly in the West, has 
always insisted on and cultivated it, generally 
with much credit, and has thereby evoked the 

[ "o] 



with Social Ambitions 

taunt that they were out of sympathy with the 
institutions of the country. That has been far 
less true than demagogues would have us be- 
lieve, but there has been enough truth in it, and 
there is still enough truth in it to put our well- 
bred class — "society people," as they are called 
— on their guard against themselves. There is 
certainly nothing essentially American in con- 
ventional fine manners and in the conventional 
social tone which people of breeding the world 
over cultivate, and where these are the posses- 
sor's chief or only title to superiority, and are 
worn as such, there is room for the sneer that 
he or she is not an American at heart. 

During the last twenty years our population 
has been passing through a period of awaken- 
ing in regard to the usages of civilized countries, 
with the result that the public point of view has 
been astonishingly readjusted. The people are, 
so to speak, tumbling over each other in their 
haste to adopt Old World social customs, and 
the paragrapher who tells us that the wife of the 
Chief Magistrate wears blue novelty silk waists 
to the theatre, made by one of her familiar 
friends, makes a point of assuring us that the 
dressmaker in question is herself "a leading so- 

[ I" ] 



To a Modern Woman 

ciety woman." Our public press is rife with 
society cant and society gossip, and justifies the 
pradice on the plea that the plain people are 
absorbed in the contemplation of the doings and 
the dresses of those whom they know only by 
hearsay, even as an Englishwoman will run the 
risk of apoplexy in order to catch a passing 
glimpse of her sovereign. Of this appetite for 
social tittle-tattle, the wealthy class seems dis- 
posed to take every advantage, pluming itself 
on its new importance to the point where it is 
constantly trying to devise some new extrava- 
gance or inanity. 

But this is not the spirit of the United States, 
nor are these the best Americans. Our nation is 
strange in this respe6t. We wear our faults upon 
our sleeves, or rather we suffer a surface popula- 
tion to belie us in various walks of life. That is 
the reason why the foreigners who come over here 
and try to amass the materials for a book in a few 
months fail to understand us as we really are. 
They are led by superficially prominent indica- 
tions to believe many things which are true only 
of a limited portion of the population, and they 
fail to perceive the sturdiness of charader, the 
independence of view, and the social charm which 

[ "O 



with Social Ambitions 

distinguishes a large and constantly increasing 
portion of the American people, who are nei- 
ther extravagant plutocrats nor vulgar republi- 
can braggarts and despisers of civilized practices. 
During the early years of our history as an 
independent nation, the imitators of foreign and 
civilized usages, the well-bred people of our 
country were, as I have indicated, regarded as 
out of sympathy with the population at large, 
and there was a certain justification in the charge; 
for though there was no conscious slur on the 
part of these students of manners, they were at 
fault in that they failed to manifest or to take 
an interest in that energy, originality, and fresh- 
ness of mental vision which was known as Amer- 
icanism. Blatant and mortifying as this national 
tendency was in its exaggerated forms, it was a 
genuine indigenous produd typical of the native 
charadler. Chastened and subdued in New Eng- 
land, and assuming outrageous expression on 
the prairies, it was the real manifestation of our 
entity as a new departure from the peoples of 
Europe. Hence it was natural that those who 
were shocked by or felt no kinship for this trick 
of the blood should be looked at askance. Among 
those who claimed in their own hearts social 

[ "3] 



"To a Modern Woman 

prestige it was long the fashion to shrug their 
shoulders over the raw eccentricities of their 
fellow-countrymen, which, as revealed both in 
public affairs and during European travel, were 
often startling to precise taste and wofuUy sug- 
gestive of the boaster. Yet those very traits in 
their truer expression have been the vital force 
of the people, and give us our savor as a nation. 
Not to possess them is to be without the char- 
adteristics of an American. 

The experience and events of fifty years have 
served to soften the eccentricities and tone down 
the unconventional manifestations of the na- 
tional spirit. Although the prairies and the halls 
of Congress still afford occasional rampant types, 
the great body of the people is eager, as I have 
indicated, to adopt cosmopolitan usages. But 
the salt of the native charader remains undiluted 
in the blood of the people, and marks them as 
genuinely as ever, though they have learned to 
avoid some of the exuberance of language and 
look which made foreigners smile, and their sen- 
sitive countrymen blush when they met them 
in the pidure galleries of Europe. 

Most significant among the changes which 
experience and time have brought to pass has 

[ "4] 



with Social Ambitions 

been the development on the educational and 
social side. Always alive to the importance of 
general education, but unfortunately so proud 
of the maintenance of public schools that it was 
disposed to sneer at any learning not to be ac- 
quired at them, the American people — that por- 
tion of it which foreigners are so apt to overlook 
when they attempt to charaderize us — is seek- 
ing to foster in a variety of ways the opportu- 
nities for higher learning, and wider intellectual 
intelligence. Within the last twenty-five years 
not merely an array of colleges and other edu- 
cational institutions have sprung into existence, 
but with them an army of disciples whose clubs 
and classes and associations for the investigation 
and study of all the forms of learning from Eng- 
lish literature to Sanscrit have given a new tone 
and stimulus to the social side of American life. 
An independent, but now generally respedful 
eagerness to learn has taken the place of an in- 
dependent ignorance relying upon its own in- 
fallibility, which was often worn as a chip upon 
the shoulder. With it all has been manifest the 
same originality, independence, and energy of 
spirit which has been conspicuous from the first. 
This still serves to handicap as well as to pro- 

[ "5] 



To a Modern Woman 

mote progress, for it is apt to beget undue self- 
confidence and lead our new women and eager 
youth of both sexes to ignore the accumulated 
wisdom of older civilizations, and claim a spe- 
cial clearness of vision, the only basis for which 
is often half-digested superficial knowledge. 
But educational and professional life all over 
the country is being constantly enriched by 
more and more competent students and prad:i- 
tioners who stand not merely for what is best 
and most earnest in American life, but who 
typify the true American spirit. While the om- 
niscient class in the population has become less 
assertive and more humble-minded, the class 
which was once politically proscribed in some 
sedions of the country because it was cultivated 
and because it shrugged its shoulders in spite 
of its breeding, has undergone a transformation 
also. A large portion of it, always patriotic at 
heart so far as dying was concerned, has learned 
to recognize that it must live in sympathy with 
our republican institutions if it would not be 
regarded as an exotic, and that aloofness is akin 
to lack of patriotism. A fringe of vain and more 
and more extravagant and self-indulgent society 
exists in our large cities, especially in New York, 
[ "6] 



with Social Ambitions 

which afFeds to claim social superiority to the 
rest of the population, and is indifferent to na- 
tional progress and to the best public interests; 
but it is numerically small, and, except in the 
newspapers, a very unimportant fador of influ- 
ence as compared with the already large and 
growing body of citizens over the country which 
is eager to live nobly and wisely. This right- 
minded and aspiring class represents the draw- 
ing together and amalgamation of the once seem- 
ingly hostile poles of opinion typified by the 
conservative, civilized, sedate, social aristocrats 
of the nation, and the independent, assertive, 
ignorant but truth-seeking sons and daughters 
of the soil. Each has recognized the justice of 
the other's criticisms, and as the outcome of a 
mutually amended point of view we have an 
earnest, intelligent, and interesting alliance, which 
insists on both fineness and strength of fibre as 
essential to progressive national charader. The 
confines of this belt of good citizenship shade 
away into stiff or heartless conventionalism on 
the one side, and smart, obtuse, social percep- 
tions on the other, but it is constantly widening 
and undergoing the refining process which re- 
sults from the increasing intelligence of the con- 

[ "7] 



To a Modern Woman 

trading parties. By way of exemplification in 
matters feminine may be instanced the more 
and more frequent requirement by those in au- 
thority in women's colleges that applicants for 
the position of teacher should possess those evi- 
dences of gentle nurture which the world is ac- 
customed to associate with the word "lady." 
Conversely one may point to the fad that origi- 
nality, independence, and suggestiveness are no 
longer repulsed by the conservative, but wel- 
comed as a leavening grace necessary to the de- 
velopment of a finer womanhood. 

To the existence of this alliance I would call 
the attention of the modern woman with social 
ambitions — you, in particular, Numbers 4 and 
5. For it seems to me that in its perpetuation and 
extension lies the best hope of society. It rep- 
resents, of course, an involuntary approximation 
of contrary opinions, and has no definite cor- 
porate existence, like a woman's club, for in- 
stance. But the alliance is real, nevertheless, 
whether it be deliberate or not. Certainly the 
American woman who wishes to lead effedively 
and aspiringly can no longer be either of the 
insipidly fashionable or the smart, assertive, 
schoolma'am type. In her composition that 

[ "8] 



with Social Ambitions 

eager, star-investigating spirit, which through 
all the phases of her brilliant but often nerve- 
harrowing evolution has distinguished her, must 
curb itself to the yoke of social refinement. On 
the other hand, the day has passed when the 
charms of mere convention, of graceful elegance 
fortified by nothing deeper than wit, or supple- 
ness of mind, would rank the possessor among 
the leaders of society. 

Imitation, therefore, of the witchery worn by 
the women of the French salons will, however 
successful, if it be limited to mere manners and 
mental accomplishments — the pyrotechnics of 
social adroitness — gain for the modern woman 
of ambition, be she discerning and honest with 
herself, only a sore conscience. First of all, let her 
be a lady — elegant, gracious, pure, and tender; 
but, last of all, let her be merely that and stop 
there, looking down with amiable supercilious- 
ness on the world outside the narrow limit 
hedged by the conventions of those who play 
at living, and fancy themselves the real world. 
It is becoming more and more easy in this coun- 
try to be a fashionable fine lady, without audible 
reproach, for the class of mere society people is 
a growing one. Yet to those who are content 

[ "9] 



To a Modern Woman 

thus to waste their Hves, the difficulty of being 
recognized as anything but society persons is 
just as great as ever, for though the ranks of 
the aUiance may seem to terminate on one side 
in their diredion, there is a dividing chasm be- 
tween them broad as is the difference between 
careless aristocracy and sympathizing humanity. 
On one side of this chasm live those whose vital 
interest is to be exquisite and to be entertained; 
on the other, those whose souls are bent upon 
the finest aspirations and hopes of the race. In 
the heart of this alliance between conventional 
culture and humanity the reforms, the enter- 
prises, and the safeguards projeded for the ad- 
vancement of modern society are born, and here 
they find their truest champions. 

It is not easy, however, my correspondents, 
to decide whether there lies greater danger for 
the modern woman with social ambitions in the 
allurements of mere fashionable society, or in the 
temptations to be smart, superficial, and com- 
mon, which confront her at the point where the 
alliance shades toward the camp of democratic 
individuality. Here there is a second chasm; yet, 
like the sunken road into which the cuirassiers 
of Napoleon fell at Waterloo, it is not evident 
[ I20 ] 



with Social Ambitions 

at first glance to those who, fired by the ardor of 
youth, but socially unenlightened, tilt at fame 
and world progress. The evolution of democracy 
having in the case of woman been supplemented 
by the enfranchisement of her sex, present con- 
ditions afford extraordinary opportunities for the 
exercise of her new-found liberty. So secure is her 
position, so welcome is her announced determi- 
nation to readjust and regenerate the world, that 
humanity is prepared to give her her head and to 
applaud every sign of advancement. 

But man, though thus encouraging and at 
heart keenly appreciative, is watching her closely, 
and there can be no question that if he has to 
choose between the old-time woman of conven- 
tion — the exquisite, picturesque doll of society 
— and a monster who revolts at sex, sneers at 
sentiment, and administers the affairs of life on 
a dull, utilitarian basis enlivened only by know- 
ing, mundane humor, he will prefer the doll, or, 
if she be out of the question, he will fight the 
monster. It would be St. George and the dragon 
again ! Long has the idea which the poet put 
into words. 

Mans love is of man's life a thing apart^ 
^Tis woman's whole existence^ 

[ i^i ] 



T^o a Modern Woman 

been uttered with a sigh by our wives and mo- 
thers; yet with pride, too, and a secret joy in 
spite of the melancholy inflexion. There are 
some women to-day who would throw off the 
yoke of this adage and enter the lists of life on 
the footing of a second-class man, proud of their 
swagger, and with the instinds of the wife and 
mother sternly repressed. Fortunately, to the 
woman of the alliance this new woman of demo- 
cratic individuality is as abhorrent as she is to 
men. But it is not in her extreme type that she 
is as yet most dangerous, for admiration comes 
only by degrees. The danger lies in the failure 
to recognize the species in the bustling, chirp- 
ing, metallic, superficial class of women which 
in some numbers, and with the wiry whirr of 
grasshoppers, infests the cities and towns of the 
republic to-day — women who have no rever- 
ence and no sentiment, no desire to learn for the 
sake of knowledge, but merely for ostentation 
— women who have not progressed as souls, but 
who have substituted coarseness for aspiration, 
and material "cuteness" for unsophisticated 
purity of thought and sentiment. 

The modern woman with social ambitions 
must be essentially a modern woman. That is, 
[ 122 ] 



with Social Ambitions 

she must recognize the justice of and sympathize 
with the aspirations of society for a broader hu- 
manity, and she must recognize and be a party 
to the responsibihties placed upon her own sex 
by the process of emancipation. Now, if ever, 
is the opportunity for woman to show what she 
is made of. If she is made simply of sugar and 
spice and all that is nice, as we are informed in 
the nursery rhyme, we shall have to accept her 
as she is, and put up with her delightful vola- 
tility and tender but unintelledual limitations. 
If, on the other hand, as the world is ready to 
believe, she is a star-seeking creature, who has 
been kept down, she will soon be able to give 
manifest signs of her ability to soar; and it is 
equitable to remind her that the burden of proof 
is on her. She cannot afford, distinctly, to be 
superficial. She must be thorough both in her 
investigations and her intuitions or she will 
amount to nothing, for it must be remembered 
that though man may be slow at intuition, he is 
capable in investigation. Every woman of the 
present day who becomes either an elegant vo- 
luptuary or an egotistical, metallic flibbertigibbet, 
furnishes one more piece of evidence for the 
edification of those who maintain that the men- 
[ 123 ] 



To a Modern Woman 

tal constitution of her sex, save in its capacity 
for affedion, is shallow. That is probably not 
the truth, but she should make the demonstra- 
tion of the calumny more complete. Woman's 
authority over matters social is far greater than 
it has ever been. Not only as regards the social 
manifestations of society, but in the matter of 
the deeper problems of social living upon which 
the progress of society depends, her influence is 
becoming more and more a vital factor and force. 
If she is sincere, society will become both more 
earnest and more attractive; if she is simply seek- 
ing liberty at the expense of religion, purity, 
sentiment, and the fine things of the spirit, it 
were almost better she were again a credulous, 
beautiful doll, and remained so to the end of 
time. Clearly, the modern woman with social 
ambitions must not negled: to hold fast to the 
old and everlasting truths of life in her struggle 
toward the stars. Sympathy with and capacity to 
promote new ideas are essential to her progress, 
but only by allegiance to the eternal feminine, 
to the behests of love and motherhood and 
beauty of imagination, can the development of 
society on the lines of a broader and wiser hu- 
manity be effedually established. 

[ IH ] 



To A Young Man wishing 
to be an American. I. 



I 



^ WROTE this once as a defini- 
$vh tion of Americanism : "It seems 
^ to me to be, first of all, a con- 
W sciousness of unfettered indi- 
^^^^^^^^ viduality coupled with a deter- 
mination to make the most of self." In short, a 
compound of independence and energy. To you, 
in the earnest temper of mind which your letter 
of inquiry suggests, this definition may seem a 
generality of not much praftical value; declara- 
tive of essential truth, yet only vaguely helpful 
to the individual. Yet I offer it as a starting- 
point of dodrine, for to my thinking the peo- 
ple of the United States who have impressed 
themselves most notably on the world have 
possessed these two traits, independence and 
energy, in marked degree. And to you, whatever 
your condition in life, if you consider, it must 
be apparent that manly self-respe6l and enter- 
prising force are essential to character and good 
citizenship, and that the prominence accorded 
to these qualities by those who have analyzed 
the component parts of our nationality is a dis- 



To a Young Ma 



n 



tindion which should be perpetuated and rein- 
forced by succeeding generations. 

Nevertheless, the counsel seems to approxi- 
mate a glittering generality for the reason that 
the opportunities for ading upon it no longer 
sprout on every bush as in the forties, fifties, 
sixties, and seventies of the present century when 
we were a budding nation and much of our ter- 
ritory was still virgin soil. I write "seems to 
approximate" advisedly, for the opportunities 
are just as plenty, merely less obvious. Yet here 
again I must make this qualification — one which 
recalls doubtless the favorite aphorism employed 
to meet the plea that the legal profession is 
overcrowded — that there is always an abundance 
of room on the top benches. Indisputably the 
day has passed when the ambitious and enter- 
prising American youth could have fruit from 
the tree of material fortune almost by stretching 
out his hand. Now he has to climb far, and the 
process is likely to be slow and discouraging. 
The conditions peculiar to a sparse population 
in a new country rich in resources have almost 
ceased to exist, and, though a young nation still, 
we are face to face with the problems which con- 
cern a seething civilization where almost every 

[ 1^6] 



W^ishing to be an American 

calling seems full. Now and again some lucky- 
seeker for fortune still finds it in a brief twelve- 
month, but for the mass of American young 
men the opportunities for speedy, dazzling pros- 
perity have ceased to exist. Those who win the 
prizes of life among us nowadays owe their suc- 
cess, in all but sporadic cases, to unusual talents, 
tireless zeal and unremitting labor, almost as in 
England, and France, and Germany. So also, 
with the passing of the period when enterprise 
and ambition were whetted by the promise of 
sudden and vast rewards, have disappeared many 
of the traits, both external and psychological, 
which were characteristic of our early nationality. 
The buffalo is nearly extind, and with him is 
vanishing much of the bluff, graceless assertive- 
ness of demeanor which was once deemed essen- 
tial by most citizens to the display of native in- 
dependence. Our point of view has changed, 
broadened, evolved in so many ways that it were 
futile to do more than indicate by a general de- 
scription what is so obvious. Partly by the en- 
grafting and adoption of foreign ideas and cus- 
toms, partly by the growth among us of new 
conditions beyond the simple ken of our fore- 
fathers, our national life has become both com- 
[ 127 ] 



To a Young Man 



plex and cosmopolitan. If we, who were once 
prone to believe our knowledge, our manners, 
and our customs to be all-sufficient, have been 
borrowing from others, so we in our turn have 
been imitated by the older nations of Europe, 
and the result is an approximation in sympa- 
thies and a blurring of distindlions. Political dif- 
ferences and race superficialities of expression 
seem a larger barrier than they really are, for in 
its broader faiths and vision the civilized world 
is becoming homogeneous. The ocean cable and 
the facilities for travel have palsied insular pre- 
judice and lifted the embargo on the free inter- 
change of ideas. The educated American sees 
no resemblance to himself in the caricatures of 
twenty-five years ago, and rejoices in the con- 
sciousness that the best men the world over are 
essentially alike. This, perhaps, is only another 
way of reasserting that human nature is always 
human nature, but this old apothegm has a 
clearer significance to-day than ever before. 

Yet the opportunities for the display of en- 
terprise and independence remain none the less 
distind; because we are becoming a cosmopoli- 
tan community and the old spectacular flavor 
has been kneaded out of the national life. Much 
[ 1^8 ] 



W^ishing to be an American 

of our free soil has been appropriated by an 
army of emigrants from Europe, and in connec- 
tion with this fad; the saying is rife that every 
foreigner seems infused with a new dignity from 
the moment that he becomes an American. 
This may be bathos in individual cases, yet it 
is the offspring of truth. Still it remains equally 
true that we have an enormous foreign popula- 
tion whose ideas and standards are those which 
they brought with them. Proud as these men 
and women may be of their new nationality, and 
eager as they may be to aid in the promotion 
of good citizenship, their very existence here in 
large numbers has altered the conditions of the 
problem of Americanism. The problem involved 
is no longer that of the winning of a new land 
by a free, spirited people under a republican 
form of government, but the larger equation of 
the evolution of the human race. Americanism 
to-day stands in a sense more accurate than be- 
fore as the experiment of government of the 
people, for the people, and by the people, and 
for the most complete amalgamation of the 
blood of Christendom which the human race 
has ever known. We have lately been celebrat- 
ing our centennial anniversaries. Already the 
[ 1^9 ] 



To a Young Ma 



n 



great figures of our early history seem remote. 
The struggle in which we are engaged is intenser 
and broader than theirs : It concerns the progress 
of human society. You, whom I am addressing, 
find yourself aunit in avast, heterogeneous popu- 
lation and a complex civilization. You live in the 
midst of the most modern aspirations and appli- 
ances, and cheek by jowl with the joy and sorrow, 
the comfort and distress, the virtue and vice of 
a great democracy. Your birthright of indepen- 
dence and energy finds itself facing essentially 
the same perplexities as those which confront the 
inhabitants of other civilizations where the tide 
of existence runs strong and exuberant. If our 
nationality is to be of value to the world, Ameri- 
canism must stand henceforth for a redtification 
of old theories concerning, and an application of 
fresh vitality to the entire problem of human 
living. 

Love of country should be a part of the creed 
both of him who counsels and him who listens, 
yet I deem it my duty, considering the nature 
of our topic, to suggest that there are not a few 
in the world, foreigners chiefly, who would be 
disposed to answer your inquiry how best to be 
an American, by citing Punch's advice to persons 
[ 130 ] 



Wishing to he an A?nerican 

about to marry, "don't !" It does credit to your 
love of country that you have assumed a true 
American to be a consummation devoutly to be 
emulated. Humility on this subjed: has certainly 
never been a national trait, and I cannot sub- 
scribe to any such doubt myself. But yet again 
let me indicate that across the water the point 
is at lest mooted whether the seeker for perfed: 
truth would not be nearer success if incarnated 
under almost any other civilized name. Let me 
hasten to add that I believe this to be due to 
national prejudice, envy, and lack of intelligent 
discrimination, especially the latter, in that the 
foreigner is mistaken as to the identity of the 
true American. It behooves you therefore to 
ascertain carefully who the true American is, for 
even my defence seems to hint at the suggestion 
that all Americans are not equally admirable. 
Forty years ago an intimation that all Ameri- 
cans were not the moral and intelledual, to say 
nothing of the physical, superiors of any Eng- 
lishman, Frenchman, German or Italian alive 
would have subjected a writer to beetling crit- 
icism ; but, as I have already intimated, we have 
learned a thing or two since then. And it is not 
a little thing to have discovered that, though 

[ >3i ] 



To a Young Man 



their hearts were right and their intentions good, 
our forefathers were not so abnormally virtuous 
and wise as to entitle them or us to an exclusive 
and proscriptive patent of superiority. We glory 
in them, but while we revere them as the fos- 
terers and perpetuators of that fine, energetic, 
high-minded, probing spirit which we call the 
touch-stone of Americanism, we are prepared, 
with some reluctance, yet frankly, when cor- 
nered, to admit that they did not possess a mo- 
nopoly of righteousness or knowledge. 

I shall assume, then, that you, in common 
with other citizens, have reached this rationally 
patriotic point of view and are willing to agree 
that we are not, as a nation, above criticism. If 
you are still inclined to regard us, the plain peo- 
ple of these United States, as a mighty phalanx 
of Sir Galahads in search of the Holy Grail, the 
citation of a few fads may a6t aperiently on your 
mind and wash away the cobwebs of hallucina- 
tion. For instance, to begin from the political 
standpoint, our acquirement of Texas and other 
territory once belonging to Mexico suggests the 
predatory methods of the Middle Ages rather 
than an aspiring and sensitive national public 
temper. The government of our large cities has 
[ 132 ] 



Wishing to be an American 

from time to time been so notoriously corrupt 
as to indicate at least an easy-going, shiftless, 
civic spirit in the average free-born municipal 
voter. It is a matter of common knowledge that 
in the legislative bodies of all our States there 
is a certain number of members whose adtion in 
support of or against measures is controlled by 
money bribes. From the point of view of morals, 
statistics show that poverty and crime, drunken- 
ness and licentiousness in our large cities are 
little less rife than in the great capitals of Eu- 
rope; and you have merely to read the news- 
papers to satisfy yourself that individuals from 
the population of the small towns and of the 
country distrifts from the eastern limit of Maine 
to the southwestern coast of California are capa- 
ble of monstrous murders, rank thefts, and a 
sensational variety of ordinary human vices. It 
were easy to illustrate further, but this should 
convince you that the patriotic enthusiast who 
would prove the people of the United States to 
be a cohort of angels of light has verily a task 
compared with which the labors of Sisyphus and 
other victims of impossibility fade into ease. 
Even our public schools, that favorite emblem 
of our omniscience, have been declared by au- 

[ 133 ] 



To a Young Man 



thority to merit interest but by no means gro- 
velling admiration on the part of the effete peo- 
ples of Europe. 

We will proceed then on the understanding 
that, whatever its past, the present civilization 
of the United States reveals the every-day hu- 
man being in his or her infinite variety, and that 
the true American must grasp this fa(5l in order 
to fulfil his destiny. If our nation is to be a lamp 
to the civilized world, it will be because we prove 
with time that poor human nature, by virtue of 
the leaven called Americanism, has reached a 
higher plane of intelligent virtue and happiness 
than the world has hitherto attained. Who then 
is the true American? And what are the signs 
which give us hope that the people of the 
United States are capable of accomplishing this 
result ? What, too, are the signs which induce 
our censors and critics to shake their heads and 
refuse to acknowledge the probability of it ? 



[ 134] 



To A Young Man wishing 
to be an American. II. 



l^b^S^fe WILL begin with the inverse pro- 
^ T ^ cess and indicate a list of those who 
^ . "^ are not true Americans, and yet who 
^p^^^p are so famihar types in our national 
community that the burden of proof is on the 
patriot to show that they are not essentially 
representative. 

No. I. I^he Plutocratic Gentleman of Leisure 
who Amuses Himself. — Here we have a deliber- 
ate imitation of a well-known figure of the older 
civilizations. The grandfather by superior abil- 
ity, industry, and enterprise has accumulated a 
vast fortune. His grandchildren, nurtured with 
care, spend their golden youth in mere extrava- 
gant amusement and often in dissipation. There 
are many individuals in our so-called leisure class 
who devote their lives to intelligent and useful 
occupation, but there is every reason for assert- 
ing that the point of view of the child of fortune 
in this country is significantly that of the idler 
— and a more deplorable idler than he of the 
aristocracies of Europe on whom he models 
himself for the reason that the foreigner is less 

[ 135] 



'To a Young Man 



indifferent than he to intelledual interests. Is 
there any body of people in the world more con- 
temptible, and any body among us more useless 
as an inspiring produdt of Americanism, than the 
pleasure-seeking, unpatriotic element of the very 
rich who, under the caption of our best society, 
arrogate social distinction by reason of their 
vulgar ostentation of wealth, their extravagant 
methods of entertainment and their aimless 
pleasure-loving lives ? To vie with each other 
in lavish outlay, to visit Europe with frequency, 
to possess steam-yachts, to bribe custom-house 
officers, to sneer at our institutions and, save 
by an occasional check, to ignore all the duties 
of citizenship, is an off-handed epitome of their 
existence. And in it all they are merely copy-cats 
— servile followers of the aristocratic creed, but 
without the genuine prestige of the old-time 
nobilities. And in the same breath let me not 
forget the women. 

\_Note. — "I was afraid you were going to," said 
my wife, Josephine. "Women count for so 
much here, and yet their heads seem to become 
hopelessly turned as soon as they are multi- 
millionaires."] 

Women indeed count for much here, and yet 
[ >36] 



Wishing to he an American 

it is they even more than the men who are re- 
sponsible for and encourage the mere pleasure- 
loving life among the leisure class. A ceaseless 
round of every variety of money-consuming, 
vapid amusement occupies their days and nights 
from January to January, and for what purpose ? 
To marry their daughters to foreign noblemen ? 
To breed scandal by pursuing intimacies with 
other men than their husbands ? To demonstrate 
that the American woman, when she has all the 
opportunities which health, wealth, and leisure 
can bestow, is content to become a mere quick- 
witted, shallow voluptuary ? 

You will be told that these people are very 
inconsiderable in number, that they really exer- 
cise a small influence, and that one is not to 
judge the men and women of the United States 
by them. It is true that they are not very nu- 
merous, though their number seems to be in- 
creasing, and I am fain to believe that they are 
not merely out of sympathy with, but alien in 
character to, the American people as a whole; 
and yet I cannot see why an unfriendly critic 
should not claim that they are representative, 
for they are the lineal descendants of the men 
from every part of the land who have been the 

[ 137 ] 



To a Young Man 



most successful in the accumulation of wealth. 
Their grandfathers were the pioneers whose 
brains and sinews were stronger than their fel- 
lows in the struggle of nation-building; their 
fathers were the keenest and not presumptively 
the most dishonest men of affairs in the coun- 
try. Though the plain people of the nation affed 
to reprobate this class as un-American and evil, 
yet the newspapers, who aim to be the exponents 
of the opinions of the general mass and to cater 
to their preferences, are constantly setting forth 
the doings of the so-called multi-millionaires and 
their associates with a journalistic gusto and re- 
dundancy which reveals an absorbing interest and 
satisfadion in their concerns on the part of the 
everyday public. 

Undeniably there are no laws which prohibit 
the wealthy from squandering their riches in fu- 
tile extravagance and wasting their time in empty 
frivolities, nor is our leisure class peculiar in this 
when compared with the corresponding class in 
other countries, unless it be in a more manifest 
bent toward civic imbecility. But, from the point 
of view of human progress, is it not rather dis- 
couraging that the most financially prosperous 
should aspire merely to mimic and outdo the 

[ 138] 



Wishing to he an American 

follies of courts, the heartless levity and extrava- 
gance of which have been among the instigators 
of popular revolution ? Surely, if this is the best 
Americanism, if this is what democracy proffers 
as the flower of its crown of success, it were more 
satisfactory to the sensitive citizen to owe alle- 
giance to some country where the pretensions 
to omniscient soul superiority were more com- 
mensurate with the results produced. 

No. 1. T'he Easy-going Hypocrite. — Here is 
another slip from the tree of human nature, 
which flourishes on this soil with a sturdy 
growth. A large section of the American people 
has been talking for buncombe, not merely since 
years ago the member of Congress from North 
Carolina naively admitted that his remarks were 
uttered solely for the edification of the county of 
that name, and so supplied a descriptive phrase 
for the habit, but from the outset of our national 
responsibilities. To talk for effedt with the thinly 
concealed purpose of deceiving a part of the 
American people all of the time has been and 
continues to be a favorite practice with many of 
the politicians of the country. Yet this public 
trick of proclaiming sentiments and opinions 
with the tongue in the cheek is the conspicuous 

[ 139 ] 



To a Young Man 



surface-symptom of a larger vice which is fitly 
described as hypocrisy. There is a way of look- 
ing at this accusation which deprives it of part 
of its sting, yet leaves us in a predicament not 
very complimentary to our boasted sense of hu- 
mor. It is that the free-born American citizen 
means so well that he is habitually dazzled by 
his own predilections toward righteousness into 
utterances which he as a frail mortal cannot hope 
to live up to, and consequently that he is prone 
to express himself in terms which none but the 
unsophisticated are expeded to believe. In other 
words, that he is an unconscious hypocrite. 
However harmless this idiosyncrasy may have 
been as a preliminary trick of expression, there 
is no room for doubt that the plea of uncon- 
sciousness must cease to satisfy the most indul- 
gent moral philosopher after a very short time. 
Yet we have persevered in the pradlice aston- 
ishingly, until it may be said that hyperbole is 
the favorite form of public utterance on almost 
any subject among a large class of individuals, 
in the expectation that only a certain percentage 
will not understand that the speaker or writer 
is not strictly in earnest. In this manner the vir- 
tuous and the patriotic are enabled to give free 
[ HO ] 



W^ishing to he an America 



n 



vent to their emotions and to set their fellow- 
citizens and themselves highest among the peo- 
ple of the earth without other expenditure than 
words, resolutions, or empty laws. The process 
gently titillates the self-esteem of the performer 
so that he almost persuades himself for the time 
being that he believes what he is saying: He 
appreciates that his hearers like better to have 
their hopes rehearsed as realities at the expense 
of veracity than to be reminded of imperfedions 
at the expense of pride: And he rejoices in those 
whom he has fooled into believing that their 
hopes have been realized, and that all the virtue 
which he tremendously stands for is part and 
parcel of the national equipment. Under the in- 
sidious influence of this mode of enlightenment 
the everyday keen American citizen goes about 
with his head in the air, knowing in his secret 
heart that one-half of what he hears from the 
lips of those who represent him in public is bun- 
combe, but content with the shadow for the sub- 
stance, and wearing a chip on his shoulder as a 
warning to those who would assert that we are 
not really as virtuous and as noble as our spokes- 
men have declared. 

For instance, to return to the concrete, con- 

[HI ] 



To a Young Ma 



n 



sider the plight of a police commissioner in most 
of our large cities. Those interested in the sup- 
pression of vice appear before the legislature and 
urge the maintenance of a vigorous policy. Adts 
are passed by the law-makers manifesting the 
intention of the community to wage vigorous 
war against the social evil and the sale of liquor, 
and prescribing unequivocal regulations. The 
appointing power is urged to sele6t a strong man 
to enforce these laws. Supposing he does, what 
follows ? Murmurs and contemptuous abuse. 
Murmurs from what is known as the hard- 
headed, common-sense portion of the commu- 
nity, who complain that the strong man entrusted 
with authority does not show tad:; that what was 
expedied of him was judicious surface enforce- 
ment of the law sufficient to beguile reformers 
and cranks, and give a semblance of improve- 
ment, not stridl, literal compliance. They will 
tell you that the social evil can no more be sup- 
pressed than water can be prevented from run- 
ning down hill, and that the explicit language 
of the statutes was framed for the benefit of 
clergymen, and that no one else with common 
sense supposed it would be enforced to the letter 
by any intelligent official. The very legislators 
[ 142 ] 



Wishing to be an American 

who voted to pass the laws will shrug their 
shoulders rancorously and confide to you the 
same thing; yet in another breath assert to their 
constituents that they have fought the fight in 
defence of white-robed chastity and the sacred 
sandity of the home. 

Now, is this Americanism, the very best 
Americanism ? Surely not. It has an Anglo- 
Saxon flavor about it which it is easy to recog- 
nize as foreign and imported. Englishmen have 
been asserting for centuries that they were fight- 
ing the fight in defence of white-robed chastity 
and the sandlity of the home, to the amusement 
of the rest of the world, for in spite of the fad: 
that the laws demand a vigorous policy and the 
British matron and the Sunday-school Unions 
declare that the home is safe, those familiar with 
fads know that London is one of the most dis- 
gustingly impure cities in the world, and that 
the youth let loose upon its streets is in very 
much the same predicament as Daniel in the 
den of lions, without the same certainty of res- 
cue. And why ? Because the hard-headed, com- 
mon-sense British public sandions hypocrisy. 
They tell you that they are doing their utmost 
to crush the evil. This is for the marines, the 

[H3] 



To a Young Man 



British matron, and the Sunday-school Unions. 
But let a strong man attempt to banish from 
the streets the shoals of women of loose char- 
ader, and what an unmistakable murmur would 
arise. How long would he remain in office ? 

It may be that the social evil can no more be 
suppressed than water can be prevented from 
running down hill. That is neither here nor 
there for the purposes of this illustration. But 
to demand the passage of laws, and then to 
abuse and undermine the influence of those who 
try to enforce them is a vice more subversive 
to national character than the fault of Mary 
Magdalene and her unpenitent successors, both 
male and female. 

Take, again, our custom-house regulations 
concerning persons returning home from abroad. 
The law demands a certain tariff, yet it is noto- 
rious that a large number of so-called respe6l- 
able people are able to procure free entry for 
their effects by bribes to the subordinates. And 
why ? Because those who passed the law devised 
it to cajole a certain portion of the community; 
but those charged with the enforcement of it, in 
deference to its unpopularity, are expeded to 
make matters at the port smooth for travellers 

[ H4 ] 



Wishing to be an American 

with easy-going consciences. Hence the contin- 
ued existence at the New York Custom-house 
of the shameless bribe-taker in all his disgusting 
variety. Authority from time to time puts on a 
semblance of integrity and discipline, but the 
home-comer continues to gloat over the old 
story of double deceit, his own and another's. 
Is this the best Americanism ? Yet these are 
American citizens who offer the bribe, who 
pocket it, and who allow the abuse to exist by 
solemnly or good-naturedly ignoring it. Con- 
sider the diversity of our divorce laws. It is in- 
deed true that opinions differ as to what are and 
what are not suitable grounds for divorce, so 
that uniformity of legislation in the different 
States is difficult of attainment; yet there is rea- 
son to believe that progress toward this would 
be swifter were it not for the convenience of the 
present system which allows men and women 
who profess orthodoxy a loop-hole of escape to 
a less rigorous jurisdidlion when the occasion 
arises. Similarly, in the case of corporation laws, 
it is noticeable that not far removed from those 
communities where paid-up capital stock and 
other assurances of good faith are required from 
incorporators, some State is to be found where 

C H5] 



To a Young Man 

none of these restridions exist. Thus an appear- 
ance of virtue is preserved, self-consciousness 
of virtue flattered, a certain number deluded, 
and yet all the conveniences and privileges of 
a hard-headed, easy-going civilization are kept 
within reaching distancp. 

No. 3. "^he Worshimer of False Gods. — It is 
a commonplace of foreign criticism that the free- 
/ born American is insatiate for money, and that 
\J everything else pales into insignificance before 
the diameter of the mighty dollar. That is the 
favorite taunt of those who do not admire our 
institutions and behavior, and the favorite note 
of warning of those who would fain think well 
of us. No one can deny that the influence and 
power of money in this country during the last 
thirty years have been enormous. One reason 
for this is obvious. The magnificent resources 
of a huge territory have been developed during 
that period. Men have grown rich in a night, 
and huge fortunes have been accumulated with 
a rapidity adapted not merely to dazzle and stir 
to envy other nations, but to turn the heads of 
our own people. We have become one of the 
wealthiest civilizations, and our multi-million- 
aires are among the money magnates of the 

[ -46] 



Wishing to he an American 

world. Yet popular sentiment in public utterance 
afFeds to despise money, and inclines to abuse 
those who possess it. I write "afFedls," for here 
again the point of hypocrisy recurs to mind, and 
even you very likely would be prompt to re- 
mind me that, according to our vernacular, to 
make one's pile and make it quickly is a wide- 
spread touch-stone of ambition. True enough it 
is that there has been, and is, room for reproach 
in the aggressiveness of this tendency, and yet 
the seeming hypocrisy is once more unconscious 
in that the popular point of view intends to be 
sincere, but the situation has been too dazzling 
for sober brains and high resolves. For let it be 
said that keenness of vision and a capacity for 
escaping from the trammels of conventional and 
inveterate delusions are essentially American 
traits, and as a consequence no one more clearly 
than the American citizen appreciates the im- 
portance of material resources as a factor of 
happy living, and none so definitely as he re- 
fuses to be discouraged by the priestly creed 
that only a few can be comfortable and happy 
in this life and that the poor and miserable will 
be recompensed hereafter for their earthly tra- 
vails. His dodrine is that he desires, if possible, 

[ 147] 



To a Young Man 

to be one of that comfortable and happy few, 
and in the exuberance of his consciousness that 
human Hfe is absorbing, he fortifies the capacity 
to make the most of it by the quaint, convin- 
cing statement that we shall be a long time dead. 
His quick-witted, intelligent repugnance to the 
old theory that the mass should be cajoled into 
dispensing with earthly comforts has helped to 
give a humorous, material twist to his words; 
and yet, I venture to assert, has left his finer 
instindls unperverted, except in the case of the 
individual. This combination of an extraordi- 
nary opportunity and a shrewd intelligence has, 
however, it must be admitted, produced a con- 
siderable and sorry crop of individuals guided 
by the principle that wealth is the highest good, 
and should be sought at the expense of every 
scruple. Their many successes in the accomplish- 
ment of this single purpose have served to create 
the impression that the whole nation is thus dis- 
eased, and have done the greater harm of dwarf- 
ing many an aspiring nature, spell-bound by the 
cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces which 
sheer money-making has established. As a result 
the best Americanism is menaced both by the ex- 
ample of accumulation without conscience, and 
[ H8 ] 



Wishing to be aft American 

the dangerous public atmosphere which this gen- 
erates, in that the common eye is caught by the 
brilliance of the spedacle, and the common mind 
lured to meditate imitation at every sacrifice. So 
they say of us that the American hero is the man 
of material successes, "the smart man" who "gets 
there" by hook or crook, and that we are content 
to ask no embarrassing questions as to ways and 
means, provided the pecuniary evidences of at- 
tainment are indisputable. The patriotic Ameri- 
can resents this as a libel, and maintains that this 
type of hero-worship is but a surface indication of 
the public soul, just as the horrors of the divorce 
court are but a surface indication of the general 
conditions of married life. Yet the patriot must 
admit that there is danger to the noble aspira- 
tions which we claim to cherish as Americans 
from the bright, keen, easy-going, metallic, prac- 
tical, hard-headed, humorous citizen, male and 
female, whose aim is simply to push ahead, at 
any cost, and who in the process does not hesi- 
tate to part with his spiritual properties as being 
cumbersome, unremunerative and somewhat ri- 
diculous. The materialist is no new figure in hu- 
man civilization. " Eat, drink, and be merry, for 
to-morrow we die," is but the ancient synonyme 
[ H9 ] 



To a Young Man 



for "we shall be a long time dead." A deep, 
abiding faith in the serious purposes of human- 
ity has ever been obvious to us Americans as a 
national possession, however foreigners may- 
deny it to us, but the American nature is at the 
same time, as I have suggested, essentially prac- 
tical, level-headed, and inquiring, and is ever 
ready with a shrewd jest to dispute the sway of 
traditions founded on cant or out-worn ideas. 
It behooves you then, if you would be a true 
American, to beware overstepping the limit 
which separates aspiring, intelligent, winsome 
common-sense from the philosophy of mere 
materialism. There lies one of the great perils 
of democracy; and unless the development of 
democracy be toward higher spiritual experi- 
ences, Americanism must prove a failure. Keen 
enjoyment of living is a noble thing, so too is 
the ambition to overcome material circumstan- 
ces, and to command the fruits of the earth. A 
realization of the possibility of this, and an 
emancipation from dogmas which foreordained 
him to despair, has evolved the alert, indepen- 
dent, progressive American citizen, and side by 
side with him the individual whom the less en- 
lightened portion of the community have en- 

[ 150] 



Wishing to be an American 

shrined in their hearts under the caption of a 
smart man. This popular hero, with his taking 
guise of easy-going good nature, assuring his 
admirers by way of flippant disposition of the 
claims of conscience and aspiration that "it will 
be all the same a hundred years hence" is the 
kind of American whom every patriot should 
seek to discredit and avoid imitating. 



[ 151] 



To A Young Man wishing 
to be an American. III. 

^^^^^^HE foregoing suggestions will suf- 

#rp ^Q fice, I think, to demonstrate to you 
^^ that we are not uniformly a nation 
^P^P>^^ of Sir Galahads, and that certain 
types of Americanism, if encouraged and per- 
petuated, are likely to impair the value and force 
of our civilization. But having dispelled the hal- 
lucination that we are uniformly irreproachable, 
I would remind you that, in order to be a good 
American, it is even more necessary for you to 
appreciate the fine traits of your countrymen 
than to be keenly alive to their shortcomings. 
There are two ways of looking at any commu- 
nity, as there are two ways of looking at life. 
The same landscape may appear to the same 
gaze brilliant, inspiring, and interesting, or flat, 
homely, and unsuggestive, according as the eye 
of the onlooker be healthy or jaundiced. It is 
easy to fix one's attention on the vulgar and 
heartless ostentation of the rich, on the cheap- 
ness and venality of some of our legislators, on 
the evidences of hypocrisy and false hero-wor- 
ship, materialism, and superficiality of a portion 

[ "5^] 



Wishing to be an American 

of our population, and in doing so to forget and 
overlook the efficacy and finer manifestations of 
the people whose lives are the force and bul- 
wark of the state. It is easy to go through the 
streets of a large city and note only the noise 
and smoke and stir, coarse circumstance and 
coarser crime, negleding to remember that be- 
neath this kernel of hard, real life the human 
heart is beating high and warm with the hopes 
and desires of the spirit. It is not necessary for 
a human being, it is essentially not necessary 
for an American, to look at life from the point 
of view of what the eye beholds in the hours of 
soul-torpor. True is it that Americanism stands 
to-day as almost synonymous with the struggle 
of democracy, and that the equal development 
of the life of the whole people for the common 
good is what most deeply concerns us; but this 
does not mean that it is right or American to 
adhere to what is ordinary and low, because it 
is still inevitable that the ideals and standards 
of the mass should not be those of the finest 
spirits. It was an American who bade you hitch 
your wagon to a star, and you have only to re- 
fle6l in order to recall the spiritual vigor, the 
righteous force of will, the strength of aspiring 

[ 153] 



To a Young Man 



mind, the patriotic courage, the tireless soul- 
struggle of the early generations of choicely 
educated, simply nurtured Americans. Their 
thought and conscience, true and star-seeking 
even in its limitations, laid the foundations of 
law and order, of civic liberty and private wel- 
fare, of national honor and domestic repute. 
Their enterprise and perseverance, their grit and 
suppleness of intelligence wrested our broad 
Western acreage from the savage and — 

\_Note. — I was here interrupted in the fervor of 
this genuine peroration by my wife Josephine's 
exclamation, "Oh, how atrociously they abused 
and persecuted those poor Indians, shunting 
them off from reservation to reservation, cheat- 
ing them out of their lands and furs ! " 

It is not agreeable to be held up in this high- 
wayman fashion when one is warming to a sub- 
jed:, but there is a melancholy truth in Jose- 
phine's statement which cannot be utterly con- 
tradicted. Still this is what I said to her: "My 
dear, I had hoped you understood that I had 
referred sufficiently to our national delinquen- 
cies, and that I was trying to depid: to my cor- 
respondent the other side of the case. However 

[ 154] 



Wishing to be an American 

just and appropriate your criticism might be 
under other circumstances, I can only regard it 
now as misplaced and unfortunate." I spoke 
with appropriate dignity. "Hoity, toity, toity 
me!" she responded. "I won't say another 
word."] 

— wrested our broad Western acreage from the 
savage, and in less than half a century trans- 
formed it into a thriving, bustling, forceful civi- 
lization. Their ingenuity, their restless spirit of 
inquiry, their pradlical skill, their impatience 
of delay and love of swift decisive adtion have 
ereded countless monuments in huge new cities 
founded in the twinkling of an eye, in the mar- 
vellous useful inventions which have revolution- 
ized the methods of the world, the cotton-gin, 
the steamboat, the telegraph, the telephone, the 
palace-car — in the eager response made to the 
call of patriotism when danger threatened the ex- 
istence of their country, and in the strong, origi- 
nal, clear-thinking, shrewdly ading, quaint per- 
sonalities which have sprung from time to time 
from the very soil, as it were, in full mental 
panoply like the warriors of the Cadmean seed. 
Their stern sense of responsibility, their earnest 

[ "55] 



To a Young Man 

desire for self-improvement, their ambitious zeal 
to acquire and to diffuse knowledge have found- 
ed, fostered, and supported the system of pub- 
lic schools and well-organized colleges which 
exist to-day in almost every portion of the 
country. The possessors of these qualities were 
Americans — the best Americans. Their plan of 
life was neither cheap nor shallow, but stead- 
fast, aspiring, strong, and patient. From small 
beginnings, by industry and fortitude, they 
fought their way to success, and produced the 
powerful and vital nation whose career the world 
is watching with an interest born of the know- 
ledge that it is humanity's latest and most im- 
portant experiment. The development of the 
democratic principle is at the root of American- 
ism, but whoever, out of deference to what may 
be called pradical considerations, abates one jot 
the fervor of his or her desire to escape from 
the commonplace, or who, in other words, for- 
sakes his ideals and is content with a lower aim 
and a lower outlook, in order to suit the aver- 
age temper, is false to his birthright and to the 
best Americanism. 

It has been one of the grievances of those, 
whose material surroundings have been more 

[ 156] 



Wishing to be an American 

favorable and who have possessed more ostensi- 
ble social refinement than the mass of the popu- 
lation, that they were regarded askance and ex- 
cluded from public service and influence. There 
used to be some foundation for this charge, but 
the counter plea of lack of sympathy and distrust 
of country was still more true, and an explanation 
and, in a large measure, a justification of the pre- 
judice. True strength and refinement of charadler 
has always in the end commanded the resped; and 
admiration of our people, but they have been 
roughly suspicious of any class isolation or as- 
sumption of superiority. It has been difficult 
accordingly for that type of Americans who ar- 
rogated tacitly, but nevertheless plainly, the 
prerogatives of social importance, to take an ac- 
tive part in the responsibilities of citizenship. 
They have been mistrusted, and sneered at, and 
not always unjustly, for they have been prone 
to belittle our national institutions and to make 
sport of the social idiosyncrasies of their uncon- 
ventional countrymen for the entertainment of 
foreigners. And yet the people have never failed 
to recognize and to reverence the fine emana- 
tions of the spirit as evidenced by our poets, 
historians, thinkers, or statesmen. Our forceful 

[ 157 ] 



To a Young Man 



humanitarian and ethical movements, our most 
earnest reforms found their most zealous and 
untiring supporters among the rank and file of 
the people. Abraham Lincoln was understood 
last of all by the social aristocracy of the nation. 
Emerson's inspiration found an answering chord 
in every country town in New England. True 
it is that on the surface the popular judgment 
may often seem superficial and cheap in tone, 
but the wise American is chary of accepting sur- 
face -ebullitions as the real index of the public 
judgment. He understands that mixed in with 
the unthinking and the degenerate is a rank 
and file majority of sober, self-respedting men 
and women, whose instin6ts are both earnest and 
original, and who are to be depended on in 
every serious emergency to think and ad: on 
the side of civilizing progress. It is the inability 
to appreciate this which breeds our civic cen- 
sors, who are led by their lack of perspedive 
to underestimate the character of the people 
and to foretell the ultimate failure of our ex- 
periment. 

The increase of wealth and a wider familiarity 
with luxury and comfort through the country 
has made a considerable and more important 

[ 158] 



Wishing to be an American 

class of those whose material and social sur- 
roundings are exceptional. The participation of 
the citizens of this class in the affairs of govern- 
ment is no longer discouraged — on the con- 
trary, it is welcomed by the community. Indeed, 
many men have secured nomination and eledion 
to office solely because of their large means, 
which enabled them to control men and cau- 
cuses in their own favor. 

\_Note. — An appearance of spontaneity is pre- 
served in these cases by the publication of a 
letter from leading citizens requesting the can- 
didate to stand for office. He thereupon yields 
to the overwhelming invitation of the voters of 
the distridt, and his henchmen do the rest.] 

But though the possession of wealth and so- 
cial sophistication are no longer regarded as un- 
American, the public sentiment against open or 
tacit assumption of social superiority, or a lack 
of sympathy with democratic principles, is as 
strong as ever. It is incumbent, therefore, on 
you, if you would be an American in the best 
sense, to fix your ideal of life high, and at the 
same time to fix it in sympathy with the under- 
lying American principle of a broad and pro- 
gressive common humanity, free from caste or 

[ 159 ] 



To a Young Man 



discriminating social conventions. It is not ne- 
cessary for you to accept the standards and adopt 
the behavior of the superficial and imperfedlly 
educated, but it is indispensable that you accept 
and a6t on the faith that your fellow-man is 
your brother, and that the attainment of a freer 
and more equal enjoyment of the privileges of 
life is essential to true human progress. We 
have, as I have intimated, passed through the 
pioneer stage of national development; we have 
tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our 
railroads, established our large cities — in short, 
have laid the foundations of a new and master- 
ful civilization; it now remains for us to show 
whether we are capable of treating with origi- 
nality the old problems which confront complex 
societies, and of solving them for the welfare of 
the pubhc and the consequent elevation of in- 
dividual chara6ler. 

The originality and clearness of the Ameri- 
can point of view has always been a salient na- 
tional charadleristic. Hitherto its favorite scope 
has been commercial and utilitarian. Yankee 
notions have been suggestive of sewing-ma- 
chines, reapers, and labor-saving contrivances, 
or the mechanism of rushing trade. Now that 

[ '60] 



finishing to he an American 

we have caught up with the rest of the world in 
material progress and taught it many tricks, it 
remains for the true American to demonstrate 
equal sagacity and clear-headedness in dealing 
with subtler conditions. To be sure the scope 
of our originality has not been entirely direded 
to things material, for we have ever asserted 
with some vehemence our devotion to the things 
of the spirit, squinting longingly at them even 
when obliged to deplore only a passing acquain- 
tance with them because of lack of time. The 
splendid superficiality of the army of youth of 
both sexes in the department of intelledual and 
artistic exertion, which has been one of the 
notable features of the last thirty years, has 
shown clearly enough the true temper and fibre 
of our people. To regard this superficiality as 
more than a transient symptom, and thereby to 
lose sight of the genuine intensity of nature 
which has animated it, would indicate the shal- 
low observer. Our youth has been audacious, 
self-confident, and lacking in thoroughness be- 
cause of its zeal to assert and distinguish itself, 
and thus has justly, in one sense, incurred the 
accusation of being superficial, but it has in- 
curred this partially because of its disposition 

[ i6i ] 



To a Young Ma 



n 



to maintain the privileges of individual judg- 
ments. 

Our young men and women have been 
blamed for their lack of reverence and their 
readiness to form conclusions without adequate 
knowledge or study in the teeth of venerable 
opinion and convention. Indisputably they have 
erred in this resped:, but indisputably also the 
fault is now recognized, and is being cured in 
the curriculum of education. Yet, evil as the 
fault is, the traits which seem to have nourished 
it — unwillingness to accept tradition and a 
searching, honest clearness of vision — are vir- 
tues of the first water, and typical of the best 
national character. There are many persons of 
education and refinement in our society who 
accept as satisfactory and indisputable the old 
forms and symbols which illustrate the experi- 
ence, and have become the final word of the 
older civilizations in ethics, politics, and art. 
They would be willing that we should become 
a mere complement to the most highly civilized 
nations of Europe, and they welcome every evi- 
dence that we are becoming so. As I have al- 
ready suggested to you, the nations of the world 
are all nearer akin in thought and impulse than 
[ i6^] 



Wishing to be an American 

formerly, but if our civilization is to stand for 
anything, it must be by our divergence from the 
conclusions of the past when they fail to pass 
the test of honest scrutiny, not by tame imita- 
tation. Profoundly necessary as it is that we 
should accept with reverence the truths of ex- 
perience, and much as our students and citizens 
may learn from the wisdom and performance of 
older peoples, it behooves the American to prize 
and cherish his birthright of independent judg- 
ment and freedom from servile adherence to con- 
vention. Almost everything that has been truly 
vital in our produdion has borne the stamp of 
this birthright. 

The American citizen of the finest type is 
essentially a man or woman of simple character, 
and the effeft of our institutions and mode of 
thought, when rightly appreciated, is to produce 
simplicity. The American is free from the gla- 
mour or prejudice which results from the con- 
scious or unconscious influence of the lay figures 
of the old political, social, or religious world, 
from the glamour of royalty and vested caste, 
of an established or dominant church, of aris- 
tocratic, monkish, or military privilege. He is 
neither impelled nor allured to subject the lib- 
[ -63 ] 



To a Young Man 



erty of conscience or opinion to the conventions 
appurtenant to these former forces of society. 
For him the law of the state, in the making of 
which he has a voice, and the authority of his 
own judgment are the only arbiters of his con- 
dud. He accords neither to fineness of race nor 
force of intellect the right of aristocratic exclu- 
siveness which they have too often hitherto 
claimed. To the cloistered nun he devotes no 
special reverence; he sees in the haughty and 
condescending fine gentleman an objed: for the 
exercise of his humor, not of servility ; he is in- 
different to the claim of all who by reason of 
self-congratulation or ancient custom arrogate 
to themselves special privileges on earth, or spe- 
cial privileges in heaven. This temper of mind, 
when unalloyed by shallow conceit, begets a 
quiet self-resped and simple honesty of judg- 
ment, eminently serviceable in the struggle to 
live wisely. 

To the best citizens of every nation the most 
interesting and vital of all questions is what we 
are here for, what men and women are seeking 
to accomplish, what is to be the future of human 
development. For Americans of the best type, 
those who have learned to be reverent without 

[ 164] 



Wishing to he an American 

losing their independence and without sacrifice 
of originaHty, the problem of living is simplified 
through the elimination of the influence of these 
symbols and conventions. Their outlook is not 
confused or deluded by the specious dogmas of 
caste. They perceive that the attainment of the 
welfare and happiness of the inhabitants of earth 
is the purpose of human struggle, and that the 
free choice and will of the majority as to what 
is best for humanity as a whole is to be the 
determining force of the future. To those who 
argue that the majority must always be wrong, 
and that as a corollary the will of the cheap man 
will prevail, this drift of society is depressing. 
The good American in the first place, recogniz- 
ing the inevitability of this drift, declines to be 
depressed; and in the second, without subscrib- 
ing to the dodrine that the majority must be 
wrong, exercises the privilege of his own inde- 
pendent judgment, subjed only to the statute 
law and his conscience. 

There is a noble strength of position in this; 
there is a danger, too, in that it suggests a lack 
of definiteness of standard. Yet this want of pre- 
cision is preferable to the tyranny of hard and 
fast prescription. It is clear, for instance, that if 

[ '65] 



To a Young Man 



the men and women of civilization are deter- 
mined to modify their divorce laws so as to al- 
low the annulment of marriage when either party 
is weary of the compa6t, no canon or anathema 
of the church will restrain them. Nor, on the 
other hand, will the mere whim or volition of 
an easy-going majority force them to do so. The 
judgment of men and women untrammelled by 
precedent and tradition and seeking simply to 
ascertain what is best and wisest for all will set- 
tle the question. Though the majority will be 
the force that puts any law into effedt, the im- 
pulse must inevitably come from the higher wis- 
dom of the few, and that higher wisdom in 
America works in the interest of a broad hu- 
manity, free from the delusions of outworn cul- 
ture. The wisdom of the few may not seem to 
guide, but in the end the mass listens to true 
counsel. Honesty toward self and toward one's 
fellow-man, without fear or favor, is the leaven- 
ing force of the finest Americanism, and, if per- 
severed in, will lead the many, sooner or later, 
with a compelling power far beyond that of 
thrones and hierarchies. The wise application 
of this dodrine of the search for the common 
good in the highest terms of earthly condition 
[ i66] 



Wishing to be an American 

to the whole range of economic, social, and po- 
litical questions is what demands to-day the in- 
terest and attention of earnest Americans. The 
problems relating to capital and labor, to the 
restraint of the money power, to the govern- 
ment of our cities, to the education of all classes, 
to the status of divorce, to the treatment of 
paupers and criminals, to the wise control of the 
sale of liquor, to equitable taxation, and to a 
variety of kindred matters are ripe for the scru- 
tiny of independent, sagacious thought and ac- 
tion. To the consideration of these subjeds the 
best national intelligence is beginning to turn 
with a fresh vigor and efficiency, but none too 
soon. Though democracy and Americanism have 
become largely identical, the spread of the creed 
of a broader humanity in the countries of civi- 
lization where autocratic forms of government 
still obtain, has been so signal and productive 
of results that the American may well ask him- 
self or herself if our people have not been slo- 
venly and vain-glorious along the paths where it 
seemed to be their prerogative to lead. Certainly 
in the matter of many of the civic and human- 
itarian problems which I have cited, we may fitly 
borrow from the recent and modern methods 

[ 167] 



To a Young Man 

of those to whom we are apt to refer, in terms 
of condescending pity, as the effete dynasties of 
Europe. They have in some instances been more 
prompt than we to recognize the trend of our 
and the world's new faith. 



[ i68 ] 



To A Young Man wishing 
to be an American. IV. 

tfgfyfcr^^gf^N this same connexion I suggest to 
J5. J j^ you that in the domain of Hterary 



^ art an Englishman — a colonist, it 
^P^P^P is true, and so a little nearer allied 
to us in democratic sentiment — has more clearly 
and forcibly than any one else expressed the 
spirit of the best Americanism — of the best 
world-temper of to-day. I refer to Rudyard Kip- 
ling. Human society has been fascinated by the 
virility and uncompromising force of his writ- 
ings, but it has found an equal fascination in 
the deep, simple, sham-detesting sympathy with 
common humanity which permeates them. He 
has been the first to adopt and exalt the idea 
of the brotherhood of man without either con- 
descension or depressing materialistic realism. 
He has interpreted the poetry of "the trivial 
round and common task" without suggesting 
impending soup, blankets, and coals on earth 
and reward in heaven on the one hand, or with- 
out emphasizing the dirtiness of the workman's 
blouse on the other. His imagery, his symbols 
and his point of view are essentially alien to 

[ -69] 



T^o a Young Man 

those of social convention and caste. Yet his he- 
roes of the engine-room, the telegraph-station, 
the Newfoundland Banks, and the dreary ends 
of the earth, democratic though they are to the 
core, appeal to the imagination by their stimu- 
lating human qualities no less than the bearers 
of titles and the aristocratic monopolists of cul- 
ture and aspiration who have been the leading 
figures in the poetry and fiction of the past. 
Strength, courage, truth, simplicity and loving- 
kindness are still their salient qualities — the 
qualities of noble manhood; he expounds them 
to us by the force of his sympathy, which clothes 
them with no impossible virtues, yet shows 
them, in the white light of performance, men no 
less entitled to our admiration than the Knights 
of King Arthur or any of the other superhuman 
figures of traditional aesthetic culture. He recog- 
nizes the artistic value of the workaday life in 
law courts and hospitals and libraries and mines 
and fad;ories and camps and lighthouses and 
ocean steamers and railroad trains, as a stimulus 
to and redlifier of poetic imagination, negativing 
the theory that men and women are to seek in- 
spiration solely from what is dainty, exclusive, 
elegantly romantic, or rhapsodically star-gazing 

[ 170 ] 



Wishing to he an American 

in human conditions and thought. This is of the 
essence of the American idea, which has been, 
however, slow to subdue imagination, which is 
the very eledtric current of art, to its use by rea- 
son chiefly of the seeming discord between it 
and common hfe, and partly from the reluftance 
of the world to renounce its diet of highly col- 
ored court, heaven and fairy-land imagery ; part- 
ly, too, because so many of the best poets and 
writers of America have adopted traditional sym- 
bols. The great New England writers, who have 
just passed away, were, however, the exponents 
of the simple life, of high religious and intellec- 
tual thought amid common circumstance. They 
stood for noble ideals as the privilege of all. Yet 
their mental attitude, though scornful of pomp 
and materialism, was almost aristocratic; at least 
it was exclusive in that it was not wholly hu- 
man, savoring rather of the ascetic star-gazer than 
the full-blooded appreciator of the boon of life. 
Their passion was pure as snow, but it was thin. 
Yet the central tenet of their philosophy, inde- 
pendent naturalness of soul, is the necessary com- 
plement to the broad human sympathy which 
is of the essence of modern art. The difficulty 
which imagination finds in expressing itself in 

[ 171 ] 



To a Young Man 

the new terms is natural enough, for the poet 
and painter and musician are seemingly deprived 
of color, the color which we associate with mys- 
tic elegance and aristocratic prestige. Yet only 
seemingly. Externals may have lost the dignity 
and lustre of prerogative; but the essentials for 
color remain — the human soul in all its fervor 
— the striving world in all its joy and suffering. 
There is no fear that the tide of existence will 
be less intense or that the mind of man will de- 
generate in aesthetic appreciation, but it must 
be on new lines which only a master imbued 
with the value and the pathos of the highest 
life in the common life as a source for heroism 
can fitly indicate. There lies the future field for 
the poet, the novelist, and the painter — the 
idealization of the real world as it is in its high- 
est terms of love and passion, struggle, joy, and 
sorrow, free from the condescension of superior 
castes and the mystification of the star-reaching 
introsped:ive culture which seeks only personal 
exaltation, and excludes sympathy with the ev- 
eryday beings and things of earth from its so- 
called spiritual outlook. 



[ 172 ] 



To A Political Optimist. 
I. 



I 



P APPROVE of you, for I am 
fe. an optimist myself in regard to 
^ human affairs, and can conscien- 
^ tiously agree with many of the 
^^^^^^^^ patriotic statements concerning 
the greatness of the American people contained 
in your letter. Your letter interested me be- 
cause it differed so signally in its point of view 
from the others which I received at the same 
time — the time when I ran for Congress as a 
Democrat in a hopelessly Republican distrid: 
and was defeated. The other letters were gloomy 
in tone. They deplored the degeneracy of our 
political institutions, and argued from the cir- 
cumstance that the voters of my distrid pre- 
ferred "a hack politician" and "blatant dema- 
gogue" to "an educated philosopher" (the epi- 
thets are not mine) that we were going to the 
dogs as a nation. The prophecy was flattering 
to me in my individual capacity, but it has not 
served to soil the limpid, sunny flow of my 
philosophy. I was gratified, but not convinced. 
I behold the flag of my country still with moist- 

[ 173 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

ened eyes — the eyes of pride, and I continue to 
bow affably to my successful rival. 

Your suggestion was much nearer the truth. 
You indicated with pardonable levity that I was 
not eled:ed because the other man received more 
votes. I smiled at that as an apt statement. You 
went on to take me to task for having given 
the impression in my published account of the 
political canvass not merely that I ought to 
have been eled:ed, but that the failure to eled 
me was the sign of a lack of moral and intel- 
ledual fibre in the American people. If I mis- 
take not, you referred to me farther on in the 
style of airy persiflage as a "holier than thou," 
a journalistic, scriptural phrase in current use 
among so-called patriotic Americans. And then 
you began to argue: You requested me to give 
us time, and called attention to the fad that 
the English system of rotten boroughs in vogue 
fifty years ago was worse than anything we have 
to-day. "We are a young and impetuous peo- 
ple," you wrote, "but there is noble blood in 
our veins — the blood which inspired the great- 
ness of Washington and Hamilton and Franklin 
and Jeiferson and Webster and Abraham Lin- 
coln. Water does not run up hill. Neither do the 

[ '74] 



To a Political Optimist 

American people move backward. Their destiny is 
to progress and to grow mightier and mightier. 
And those who seek to retard our national 
march by cynical insinuations and sneers, by scho- 
lastic sophistries and philosophical wimwams, 
will find themselves inevitably under the wheels 
of Juggernaut, the car of republican institu- 
tions." 

Philosophical wimwams ! You sought to wound 
me in a tender spot. I forgive you for that, and 
I like your fervor. Those rotten boroughs have 
done yeoman service. They are on the tongue 
of every American citizen seeking for excuses 
for our national short-comings. But for my dread 
of a mixed metaphor I would add that they are 
moth-eaten and threadbare. 

Your letter becomes then a miscellaneous 
catalogue of our national prowess. You instance 
the cotton-gin, the telegraph, the sewing-ma- 
chine, and the telephone, and ask me to bear 
witness that they are the inventions of free-born 
Americans. You refer to the heroism and vigor 
of the nation during the Civil War, and its 
mighty growth in prosperity and population 
since; to the colleges and academies of learning, 
to the hospitals and other monuments of intelli- 

[ 175] 



To a Political Optimist 

gent philanthropy, to the huge railroad systems, 
public works, and private plants which have 
come into being with mushroom-like growth 
over the country. You recall the energy, inde- 
pendence, and conscientious desire for Christian 
progress among our citizens, young and old, 
and, as a new proof of their disinterested readi- 
ness to sacrifice comfort for the sake of princi- 
ple, you cite the recent emancipation of Cuba. 
Your letter closes with a Fourth of July pane- 
gyric on the heroes on land and sea of the war 
with Spain, followed by an exclamation point 
which seems to say, "Mr. Philosopher, put 
that in your pipe and smoke it." 

I have done so, and admit that there is a 
great deal to be proud of in the Olla Podrida 
of exploits and virtues which you have set be- 
fore me. Far be it from me to question the 
greatness and capacity of your and my country- 
men. But while my heart throbs agreeably from 
the thrill of sincere patriotism, I venture to re- 
mind you that cotton-gins, academies of learn- 
ing, and first-class battle-ships have little to do 
with the matter in question. Your mode of pro- 
cedure reminds me of the plea I have heard 
used to obtain partners for a homely girl — that 

[ '76] 



To a Political Optimist 

she is good to her mother. I notice that you 
include our political sandtity by a few sonorous 
phrases in the dazzling compendium of national 
success, but I also notice that you do not con- 
descend to details. That is what I intend to do, 
philosophically yet firmly. 

To begin with, I am not willing to admit that 
I was piqued by my failure to be eledled to Con- 
gress. I did not exped: to succeed, and my tone 
was, it seems to me, blandly resigned and even 
rather grateful than otherwise that such a serious 
honor had not been thrust upon me. Success 
would have postponed indefinitely the trip to 
Japan on which my wife, Josephine, had set her 
heart. In short, I supposed that I had concealed 
alike grief and jubilation, and taken the result in 
a purely philosophic spirit. It seems though that 
you were able to read between the lines — that 
is what you state — and to discern my conde- 
scending tone and lack of faith in the desire and 
intention of the plain people of these United 
States to sele6l competent political representa- 
tives. I can assure you that I have arrived at no 
such dire state of mind, and I should be sorry 
to come to that conclusion; but, though a phi- 
losopher, and hence, politically speaking, a 

[ 177 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

worm, I have a proper spirit of my own and 
beg to inform you that the desire and intention 
of our fellow-countrymen, whether plain or 
otherwise, so to do is, judging by their behav- 
ior, open to grave question. So you see I stand 
at bay almost where you supposed, and there is 
a definite issue between us. Judging by their 
behavior, remember. Judging by their words, 
butter would not melt in their mouths. I merely 
wish to call your attention to a few notorious 
fads in defence of my attitude of suspicion. 

\_Note. — "Josephine," said I to my wife at this 
point, "please enumerate the prominent eledtive 
offices in the gift of the American people." 

My wife rose and after a courtesy, which was 
mock deferential, proceeded to recite with the 
glib fluency of a school-girl the following list — 
"Please, sir, 

President. 

Senators of the United States (eleded by 
the State legislatures). 

Representatives of the United States. 

State Senators. 

State Assemblymen or Representatives. 

Aldermen. 

[ 178] 



To a Political Optimist 

Members of the City Council. 

Members of the School Committee." 
"Correft, Josephine. I pride myself that, 
thanks to my prodding, you are beginning to 
acquire some rudimentary knowledge concern- 
ing the institutions of your country. Thanks to 
me and Professor Bryce. Before Professor Bryce 
wrote *The American Commonwealth,' Ameri- 
can women seemed to care little to know any- 
thing about our political system. They studied 
more or less about the systems of other coun- 
tries, but displayed a profound ignorance con- 
cerning our own form of government. But after 
an Englishman had published a book on the 
subjed:, and made manifest to them that our 
institutions were reasonably worthy of attention, 
considerable improvement has been noticeable. 
But I will say that few women are as well posted 
as you, Josephine." 

She made another mock deferential courtesy. 
"Thank you, my lord and master; and lest you 
have not made it sufficiently clear that my su- 
periority in this resped: is due to your — your 
nagging, I mention again that you are chiefly 
responsible for it. It bores me, but I submit to 
it." 

[ 179 ] 



'To a Political Optimist 

"Continue then your docility so far as to 
write the names which you have just recited on 
separate slips of paper and put them in a pro- 
per receptacle. Then I will draw one as a pre- 
liminary step in the political drama which I 
intend to present for the edification of our cor- 
respondent." 

Josephine did as she was bid, and in the pro- 
cess, by way of showing that she was not such 
a martyr as she would have the world believe, 
remarked, "If you had really been eleded, Fred, 
I think I might have made a valuable political 
ally. What I find tedious about politics is that 
they 're not practical — that is for me. If you 
were in Congress now, I should make a point 
of having everything political at the tip of my 
tongue." 

"Curiously enough, my dear, I am just go- 
ing to give an objed: lesson in pradical politics, 
and you as well as our young friend may be 
able to learn wisdom from it. Now for a blind 
choice!" I added, putting my hand into the 
work-bag which she held out. 

"Aldermen !" I announced after scrutinizing 
the sHp which I had drawn. Josephine's nose 
went up a trifle. 

[ i8°] 



To a Political Optimist 

"A very fortunate and comprehensive se- 
lediion," I asserted. "The Alderman and the 
influences which operate upon and around him 
lie at the root of American pradical politics. 
And from a careful study of the root you will 
be able to decide how genuinely healthy and 
free from taint must be the tree — the tree which 
bears such ornamental flowers as Presidents and 
United States Senators, gorgeous blooms of ap- 
parent dignity and perfume."] 

This being a drama, my young patriot, I wish 
to introduce you to the stage and the principal 
charaders. The stage is any city in the United 
States of three hundred thousand or more in- 
habitants. It would be invidious for me to men- 
tion names where any one would answer to the 
requirements. Some may be worse than others, 
but all are bad enough. A bold and pessimistic 
beginning, is it not, my optimistic friend ? 

And now for the company. This drama dif- 
fers from most dramatic produdlions in that it 
makes demands upon a large number of actors. 
To produce it properly on the theatrical stage 
would bankrupt any manager unless he were 
subsidized heavily from the revenues of the 

[ ■»' ] 



To a Political Optimist 

twenty leading villains. The cast includes be- 
sides twenty leading villains, twelve low come- 
dians, no hero, no heroine (except, incidentally, 
Josephine); eight newspaper editors; ten thou- 
sand easy-going second-class villains; ten thou- 
sand patriotic, conscientious, and enlightened 
citizens, including a sprinkling of ardent re- 
formers; twenty-five thousand zealous, hide- 
bound partisans; fifty thousand respectable, 
well-intentioned, tolerably ignorant citizens who 
vote but are too busy with their own affairs 
to pay attention to politics, and as a consequence 
generally vote the party ticket, or vote to please 
a "friend"; ten thousand superior, self-centred 
souls who negled to vote and despise politics 
anyway, among them poets, artists, scientists, 
some men of leisure, and travellers; ten thou- 
sand enemies of social order such as gamblers, 
thieves, keepers of dives, drunkards, and toughs; 
and your philosopher. 

A very large stock company. I will leave the 
precise arithmetic to you. I wish merely to in- 
dicate the variegated composition of the average 
political constituency, and to let you perceive 
that the piece which is being performed is no 
parlor comedy. It is written in dead earnest, and 

[ 18^ 



To a Political Optimist 

it seems to me that the twenty leading villains, 
though smooth and in some instances aristo- 
cratic appearing individuals, are among the most 
dangerous characters in the history of this or 
any other stage. But before I refer to them 
more particularly I will make you acquainted 
with our twelve low comedians — the Board of 
Aldermen. 

It is probably a surprise to you and to Jo- 
sephine that the Aldermen are not the villains. 
Everything is comparative in this world, and, 
though I might have made them villains with- 
out injustice to such virtues as they possess, I 
should have been at a loss how to stigmatize the 
real promoters of the villainy. And after all 
there is an element of grotesque comedy about 
the charader of Aldermen in a large American 
city. The indecency of the situation is so un- 
blushing, and the public is so helpless, that the 
performers remind one in their good-natured 
antics of the thieves in Fra Diavolo; they get 
bolder and bolder and now barely take the trou- 
ble to wear the mask of respedlability. 

Have I written "thieves?" Patriotic Ameri- 
cans look askance at such full-blooded expres- 
sions. They prefer ambiguity, and a less harsh 

[ 183 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

phraseology — "slight irregularities," "business 
misfortunes," "commercial usages," "profes- 
sional services," "campaign expenses^," "lack of 
fine sensibilities," " unauthenticated rumors." 
There are fifty ways of letting one's fellow-citi- 
zens down easily in the public prints and in pri- 
vate conversation. This is a charitable age, and 
the word thief has become unfamiliar except as 
applied to rogues who enter houses as a trade. 
The community and the newspapers are chary 
of applying it to folk who steal covertly but 
steadily and largely as an increment of munici- 
pal ofiice. It is inconvenient to hurt the feelings 
of public servants, especially when one may 
have voted for them from carelessness or igno- 
rance. 

Here is a list of the twelve low comedians 
for your inspedion: 

Peter Lynch, no occupation. 

James Griffin, stevedore. 

William H. Bird, real estate. 

John S. Maloney, saloon-keeper. 

David H. Barker, carpenter. 

Jeremiah Dolan, no occupation. 

Patrick K. Higgins, junk dealer. 

Joseph Heflfernan, liquors. 

[ 184] 



'To a Political Optimist 

William T. Moore, apothecary. 

James O. Frost, paints and oils. 

Michael O'Rourke, tailor. 

John P. Driscoll, lawyer. 
You will be surprised by my first statement 
regarding them, I dare say. Four of them, Peter 
Lynch, James Griffin, Jeremiah Dolan, and 
Michael O'Rourke neither drink nor smoke. 
Jeremiah Dolan chews, but the three others do 
not use tobacco in any form. They are patterns 
of Sunday-school virtue in these resped:s. This 
was a very surprising discovery to one of the 
minor characters in our drama — to two of them 
in fad; — Mr. Arthur Langdon Waterhouse and 
his father, James Langdon Waterhouse, Esq. 
The young man, who had just returned from 
Europe with the idea of becoming United States 
Senator and who expressed a willingness to serve 
as a Reform Alderman while waiting, announced 
the discovery to his parent shortly before elec- 
tion with a mystified air. 

"Do you know," said he to the old gentle- 
man, who, by the way, though he has denounced 
every person and every measure in connection 
with our politics for forty years, was secretly 
pleased at his son's senatorial aspirations, "do 

[ 185] 



T^o a Political Optimist 

you know that some one told me to-day that 
four of the very worst of those fellows have never 
drunk a drop of liquor, nor smoked a pipe of 
tobacco in their lives. Is n't it a curious circum- 
stance ? I supposed they were intoxicated most 
of the time." 

You will notice also that Peter Lynch and 
Jeremiah Dolan have no occupation. Each of 
them has been connected in some capacity with 
the City Government for nearly twenty years, 
and they are persons of great experience. They 
have more than once near eledlion time been ami- 
ably referred to in the press as "valuable pub- 
lic servants," and it must be admitted that they 
are efficient in their way. Certainly, they know 
the red tape of City Hall from A to Z, and un- 
derstand how to block or forward any measure. 
The salary of Alderman is not large — certainly 
not large enough to satisfy indefinitely such 
capable men as they, and yet they continue to 
appear year after year at the same old stand. 
Moreover, they resist vigorously every effort 
to dislodge them, whether proceeding from po- 
litical opponents or envious rivals of their own 
party. A philosopher like myself, who is, politi- 
cally speaking, a worm, is expeded to believe 
£ 186] 



1^0 a Political Optimist 

that valuable public servants retain office for 
the honor of the thing; but even a philosopher 
becomes suspicious of a patriot who has no oc- 
cupation. 

Next in importance are Hon. William H. 
Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll. It is a well- 
known axiom of popular government that citi- 
zens are called from the plough or counting- 
room to public office by the urgent request of 
their friends and neighbors. As a fadt, this takes 
place two or three times in a century. Most as- 
pirants for office go through the form of having 
a letter from their friends and neighbors pub- 
lished in the newspapers, but only the very 
guileless portion of the public do not under- 
stand that the candidates in these cases suggest 
themselves. It is sometimes done delicately, as, 
for instance, in the case of young Arthur Lang- 
don Waterhouse of whom I was writing just 
now. He let a close friend intimate to the ward 
committee that he would like to run for Alder- 
man, and that in consideration thereof his fa- 
ther would be willing to subscribe two thousand 
dollars to the party campaign fund. It seems to a 
philosopher that a patriotic people should either 
re-edit its political axioms or live up to them. 

[ 187] 



To a Political Optimist 

Now Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John 
P. Driscoll never go through the ceremony of 
being called from the plough — in their case the 
ward bar-room. They announce six months in 
advance that they wish something, and they state 
clearly what. They are perpetual candidates for, 
or incumbents of, office, and to be eledled or de- 
feated annually costs each of them from two to 
four thousand dollars according to circumstances. 
One of them has been in the Assembly, the Gov- 
ernor's Council, and in both branches of the City 
Government; the other a member of the Assem- 
bly, a State Senator, and an Alderman, and both 
of them are now glad to be Alderman once more 
after a desperate Kilkenny contest for the nom- 
ination. They are called Honorable by the re- 
porters; and philosophers and other students of 
newspapers are constantly informed that Hon. 
William H. Bird has done this, and Hon. John 
P. Driscoll said that. 

These four are the big men of the Board. The 
others are smaller fry; ambitious and imitative, 
but less experienced and smooth and audacious. 
Yet the four have their virtues, too. It is safe to 
state that no one of them would take anything 
beyond his reach. Moreover, if you, a patriot, 
[ '88] 



7o a Political Optimist 

or I, a philosopher, were to find himself alone in 
a room with one of them and had five thousand 
dollars in bills in a pocket-book and the fad: were 
known to him, he would make no effort to pos- 
sess himself of the money. We should be abso- 
lutely safe from assault or sleight of hand. Who- 
ever would maintain the opposite does not ap- 
preciate the honesty of the American people. If, 
on the other hand, under similar circumstances, 
the right man were to place an envelope con- 
taining one thousand dollars in bills on the table 
and saunter to the window to admire the view, 
the packet would disappear before he returned 
to his seat and neither party would be able to 
remember that it ever was there. I do not intend 
to intimate that this is the precise method of pro- 
cedure; I am merely explaining that our come- 
dians have not the harsh habits of old-fashioned 
highwaymen. 

Then again, there are people so fatuous as to 
believe that Aldermen are accustomed to help 
themselves out of the city treasury. That is a 
foolish fidion, for no Alderman could. The City 
Hall is too bulky to remove, and all appropria- 
tions of the public money are made by draft and 
have to be accounted for. If any member of the 

[ 189] 



To a Political Optimist 

Board were to make a descent on the funds in 
the safe, he would be arrested as a lunatic and 
sent to an insane asylum. 

As for the other eight low comedians, it hap- 
pens in this particular drama that I would be 
unwilling to make an affidavit as to the absolute 
integrity of any one of them. But there are apt 
to be two or even three completely honest mem- 
bers of these august bodies, and two or three 
more who are pretty honest. A pretty honest 
Alderman is like a pretty good ^g^. A pretty 
honest Alderman would be incapable of touching 
an envelope containing one thousand dollars, or 
charging one hundred in return for his support 
to a petition for a bay-window; but if he were in 
the paint and oil business or the lumber trade, 
or interested in hay and oats, it would be safe to 
assume that any department of the City Govern- 
ment which did not give his firm diredly or in- 
diredlly a part of its trade would receive no 
aldermanic favors at his hands. Then again, a 
pretty honest Alderman would allow a friend 
to sell a spavined horse to the city. 



[ 190 ] 



To A Political Optimist, 
II. 



tfMji^^i^^AVING hinted gently at the leading 
,M^ TT M^ charaderistics of the twelve low co- 
M^ M M^ medians, I am ready now to make 
}^p^^^^ you acquainted with the twenty lead- 
ing villains. There is something grimly humorous 
in the spedacle of a dozen genial, able-bodied, 
non-alcoholic ruffians levying tribute on a com- 
munity too self-absorbed or too easy-going or 
too indifferent to rid itself of them. I find, on 
the other hand, something somewhat pathetic in 
the spedlacle of twenty otherwise reputable citi- 
zens and capitalists driven to villainy by the force 
of circumstances. To be a villain against one's 
will is an unnatural and pitiable situation. 

That one may smile^ and smiky and be a villain ! 

Here is the list: 

Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's 
Heat and Power Company. 

William B. Wilcox, General Manager of the 
North Circuit Tradion Company. 

David J. Prendergast, Treasurer of the Un- 
derground Steam Company. 

[ 191 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

Porter King, President of the South Valley 
Railroad Company. 

James Plugh, Treasurer of the Star Brewing 
Concern. 

Ex-State Treasurer George Delaney Johnson, 
Manager of the United Gas Company. 

Willis O. Golightly, Treasurer of the Con- 
solidated Eledric Works. 

Hon. Samuel Phipps, President of the Spar- 
kling Reservoir Company. 

P. Ashton Hall, President of the Rapid De- 
spatch Company. 

Ex-Congressman Henry B. Pullen, Manager 
of the Maguinnis Engine Works. And so on. 
I will not weary you with a complete category. 
It would contain the names of twelve other gen- 
tlemen no less prominent in connexion with 
quasi-public and large private business corpora- 
tions. With them should be associated one thou- 
sand easy-going, second-class villains, whose 
names are not requisite to my argument, but 
who from one year to another are obliged by the 
exigencies of business or enterprise to ask for 
licenses from the non-alcoholic, genial come- 
dians, for permission to build a stable, to ered: 
a bay-window, to peddle goods in the streets, to 
[ 192 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

maintain a coal-hole, to drain into a sewer, to laj) 
wires underground; in short, to do one or another 
of the many everyday things which can be done 
only by permission of the City Government. 
And the pity of it is that they all would rather 
not be villains. 

\_Note. — At the suggestion of Josephine I here 
enter a caveat for my and her protection. While 
I was enumerating the list of low comedians she 
interrupted me to ask if I did not fear lest one 
of them might sand-bag me some dark night on 
account of wounded sensibilities. She laughed, 
but I saw she was a little nervous. 

"I have mentioned no real names," said I. 

"That is true," she said, "but somehow I feel 
that the real ones might be suspicious that they 
were meant." 

I told her that this was their lookout, and that, 
besides, they were much too secure in the suc- 
cessful performance of their comedy to go out 
of their way to assassinate a philosopher. "They 
would say, Josephine, that a philosopher cuts no 
ice, which is true, and is moreover a serious 
stigma to fasten on any patriotic man or woman." 
But now again she has brought me to book on 

[ ^93 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

the score of the feelings of the leading villains. 
She appreciates that we are on terms of consid- 
erable friendliness with some Presidents of cor- 
porations, and that though my list contains no 
real names, I may give offence. Perhaps she fears 
a sort of social boycott. Let me satisfy her scru- 
ples and do justice at the same time by admit- 
ting that not every President of a quasi-public 
corporation is a leading villain. Nor every Alder- 
man a low comedian. That will let out all my 
friends. But, on the other hand, I ask the atten- 
tion even of my friends to the predicament of 
Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's 
Heat and Power Company.] 

Thomas Barnstable, the leading villain whose 
case I seled: for detailed presentation, has none 
of the coarser proclivities of David J. Prender- 
gast. Treasurer of the Underground Steam Com- 
pany. As regards David J. Prendergast, I could 
almost retrad; my allegation of pity and assert 
that he is a villain by premeditation and with- 
out compun6lion. That is, his method of dealing 
with the twelve low comedians is, I am told, con- 
duced on a cold utilitarian basis without strug- 
gle of conscience or effort at self-justification. He 

[ 194 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

says to the modern highwaymen, "Fix your price 
and let my bill pass. My time is valuable and so 
is yours, and the quicker we come to terms, the 
better for us both." What he says behind their 
backs is not fit for publication; but he recognizes 
the existence of the tax just as he recognizes the 
existence of the tariff, and he has no time to 
waste in considering the effed of either on the 
higher destinies of the nation. 

Thomas Barnstable belongs to anotherschool. 
He is a successful business man. In the ordinary 
meaning of the phrase, he is also a gentleman 
and a scholar. His word in private and in busi- 
ness life is as good as his bond; he respeds the 
rights of the fatherless and the widow, and he is 
known favorably in philanthropic and religious 
circles. Having recognized the value of certain 
patents, he has become a large owner of the stock 
of the People's Heat and Power Company, and 
is the President of the corporation. Hitherto 
he has had plain sailing, municipally speaking. 
That is, the original franchise of the company 
was obtained from the city before he became 
President, and only this year for the first time 
has the necessity of asking for further privi- 
leges arisen. Moreover, he finds his corporation 

[ 195] 



To a Political Optimist 

confronted by a rival, the Underground Steam 
Company. 

Now here is a portion of the dialogue which 
took place five weeks before election between 
this highly respeftable gentleman and his right- 
hand man, Mr. John Dowling, the efficient prac- 
tical manager of the People's Company. 

"Peter Lynch was here to-day," said Mr. 
Dowling. 

"And who may Peter Lynch be?" was the 
dignified but unconcerned answer. 

"Peter Lynch is Peter Lynch. Don't you 
know Peter ? He 's the Alderman from the fifth 
distrid;. He has been Alderman for ten years, and 
so far as I can see, he is likely to continue to be 
Alderman for ten more." 

"Ah." 

"Peter was in good humor. He was smiling 
all over." 

Mr. Dowling paused, so his superior said, 
" Oh ! " Then realizing that the manager was still 
silent, as though expecting a question, he said, 
"Why did he come ? " 

"He wishes us to help him mend his fences. 
Some of them need repairing. The wear and 
tear of political life is severe." 

[ 196 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

"I see — I see," responded Mr. Barnstable, 
refledively, putting his finger-tips together. 
"What sort of a man is Peter? " 

Mr. Dowling hesitated a moment, merely be- 
cause he was uncertain how to deal with such 
innocence. Having concluded that frankness was 
the most business-like course, he answered, 
bluffly, "He's an infernal thief He's out for 
the stuff." 

"The stuff? I see — I see. Very bad, very bad. 
It 's an outrage that under our free form of go- 
vernment such men should get a foothold in our 
cities. I hope, Dowling, you gave him the cold 
shoulder, and let him understand that under no 
consideration whatever would we contribute one 
dollar to his support." 

"On the contrary, I gave him a cigar and 
pumped him." 

"Pumped him?" 

"I wanted to find out what he knows." 

" Dear me. And — er — what does he know ? " 

"He knows all about our bill, and he says 
he 'd like to support it." 

This was a shock, for the bill was supposed 
to be a secret. 

"How did he find out about it? " 

[ 197 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

"Dreamt it in his sleep, I guess." 

" I don't care for his support, I won't have it," 
said Mr. Barnstable, bringing his hand down 
forcibly on his desk to show his earnestness and 
indignation. "I wish very much, Mr. Dowling, 
that you had told him to leave the office and 
never show his impudent face here again." 

There was a brief silence, during which Mr. 
Dowling fingered his watch-chain; then he said 
in a quiet tone, "He says that the Underground 
Steam Company is going to move heaven and 
earth to ele6t men who will vote to give them a 
location." 

"I trust you let him know that the Under- 
ground Steam Company is a stock jobbing, dis- 
reputable concern with no financial status." 

"It was n't necessary for me to tell him that. 
He knows it. He said he would prefer to side 
with us and keep them out of the streets, which 
meant of course that he knew we were able to 
pay the most if we chose. It seems Prendergast 
has been at him already." 

" Disgusting ! They both ought to be in 
jail." 

"Amen. He says he gave Prendergast an eva- 
sive answer, and is to see him again next Tues- 

[ 198 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

day. There 's the situation, Mr. Barnstable. I 
tell you frankly that Lynch is an important man 
to keep friendly to our interests. He is very 
smart and well posted, and if we allow him to 
oppose us, we shall have no end of trouble. He 
is ready to take the ground that the streets ought 
not be dug up, and that a respectable corpora- 
tion like ours should not be interfered with. Only 
he expedls to be looked after in return. I deplore 
the condition of affairs as much as you do, but 
I tell you frankly that he is certain to go over 
to the other side and oppose us tooth and nail 
unless we show ourselves what he calls friendly 
to his * interests.'" 

"Then we '11 prevent his eledion. I would sub- 
scribe money toward that myself." 

The Manager coughed, by way perhaps of 
concealing a smile. "That would not be easy," 
he said. "And if it could be done, how should 
we be better off? Peter Lynch is only one of 
fifteen or twenty, many of whom are worse than 
he. By worse I mean equally unscrupulous and 
less efficient. Here, Mr. Barnstable, is a list of the 
candidates for Aldermen on both sides. I have 
been carefully over it and checked off the names 
of those most likely to be chosen, and I find that 

[ 199 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

it comprises twelve out-and-out thieves, five 
sneak-thieves, as I call them, because they pilfer 
only in a small way and pass as pretty honest; 
four easy-going, broken-winded incapables, and 
three perfedly honest men, one of them thor- 
oughly stupid. Now, if we have to deal with 
thieves, it is desirable to deal with those most 
likely to be of real service. There are four men on 
this list who can, if they choose, help us or hurt 
us materially. If we get them, they will be able to 
swing enough votes to control the situation; if 
they 're against us, our bill will be side-tracked 
or defeated, and the Underground Steam Com- 
pany will get its franchise. That means, as you 
know, serious injury to our stockholders. There 's 
the case in a nut-shell." 

"What are their names?" asked Mr. Barn- 
stable, faintly. 

"Peter Lynch, Jeremiah Dolan, WiUiam H. 
Bird, and John P. Driscoll, popularly known in 
the inner circles of City Hall politics as *the big 
four.' And they are — four of the biggest thieves 
in the community." 

"Dear me," said Mr. Barnstable. "And what 
is it you advise doing ? " 

"Like the coon in the tree, I should say, 
[ 200 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

'Don't shoot and I '11 come down.' It 's best to 
have a clear understanding from the start." 

"What I meant to ask was — er — what is it 
that this Peter Lynch wishes?" 

"He uttered nothing but glittering generali- 
ties; that he desired to know who his friends 
were, and whether in case he were elefted he 
could be of any service to our corporation. The 
English of that is, he expeds in the first place 
a liberal subscription for campaign expenses — 
and after that retaining fees from time to time 
as our attorney or agent, which will vary in size 
according to the value of the services rendered." 

A faint gleam of cunning hope appeared in 
Mr. Barnstable's eyes. 

"Then anything we — er — contributed could 
properly be charged to attorney's fees ?" he said 
by way of thinking aloud. 

"Certainly — attorney's fees, services as agent, 
profit and loss, extraordinary expenses, machin- 
ery account, bad debts — there are a dozen ways 
of explaining the outlay. And no outlay may be 
necessary. A tip on the stock will do just as well." 

" Dear, dear," reiterated Mr. Barnstable. " It 's 
a deplorable situation; deplorable and very awk- 
ward." 

[ 20I ] 



To a Political Optimist 

"And the awkward part is, that we 're a dead 
cock in the pit if we incline to virtue's side." 

Mr. Barnstable sighed deeply and drummed 
on his desk. Then he began to walk up and 
down. After a few moments he stopped short 
and said: 

"I shall have to lay it before my dired;ors, 
Dowling." 

"Certainly, sir. But in general terms, I hope. 
A single — er — impradlical man might block the 
situation until it was too late. Then the ex- 
pense of remedying the blunder might be much 
greater." 

Mr. Barnstable inclined his head gravely. "I 
shall consult some of the wisest heads on the 
Board, and if in their opinion it is advisable to 
conciliate these blackmailers, a formal expression 
of approval will scarcely be necessary." 

A few days later the President sent for the 
Manager and waved him to a chair. His expres- 
sion was grave — almost sad, yet resolute. His 
manner was dignified and cold. 

"We have considered," said he, "the matter 

of which we were speaking recently, and under 

the peculiar circumstances in which we are placed, 

and in view of the fa6l that the success of our bill 

[ 202 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

and the defeat of the Underground Steam Com- 
pany is necessary for the protedlion of the best 
interests of the public and the facihtation of hon- 
est corporate business enterprise, I am empow- 
ered to authorize you to take such steps, Mr. 
Dowhng, as seem to you desirable and requisite 
for the proper protection of our interests." 

"Very good, sir. That is all that is neces- 
sary." 

There was a brief silence, during which Mr. 
Barnstable joined his finger-tips together and 
looked at the fire. Then he rose augustly, and 
putting out his hand with a repellant gesture 
said, "There is one thing I insist on, which is 
that I shall know nothing of the details of this 
disagreeable business. I leave the matter wholly 
in your hands, Dowling." 

"Oh, certainly, sir. And you may rely on my 
giving the cold shoulder to the rascals wherever 
it is possible for me to do so." 

That is a pitiful story, is n't it ? Virtue as- 
saulted almost in its very temple, and given a 
black eye by sheer force of cruel, overwhelming 
circumstances. Yet a true story, and the proto- 
type in its general features of a host of similar 
episodes occurring in the different cities of this 
[ 203 ] 



T'o a Political Optimist 

land of the free and the home of the brave. 
Each case, of course, has its peculiar atmo- 
sphere. Not every leading villain has the sensi- 
tive and combative conscience of Thomas Barn- 
stable; nor every general manager the bold, frank 
style of Mr. Dowling. There is every phase of 
soul-struggle and method from unblushing, 
business-like bargain and sale to sphinx-like 
and purposely unenlightened and ostrich-like 
submission. In the piteous language of a de- 
fender of Thomas Barnstable (not Josephine), 
what can one do but submit ? If one meets a 
highwayman on the road, is one to be turned 
back if a purse will secure a passage ? Surely not 
if the journey be of moment. Then is a corpo- 
rate body (a corporation has no soul) to be 
starved to death by delay and hostile legislation 
if peace and plenty are to be had for an attor- 
ney's fee ? If so, only the rascals would thrive 
and honest corporations would bite the dust. 
And so it happened that Mr. Dowling before 
eled:ion cast his moral influence in favor of the 
big four, and a little bird flew from headquar- 
ters with a secret message, couched in suffi- 
ciently vague language, to the effed: that the 
management would be pleased if the employees 
[ 204 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

of the People's Heat and Power Company were 
to mark crosses on their Australian ballots 
against the names of Peter Lynch, Jeremiah 
Dolan, Hon. William H. Bird, and the Hon. 
John P. Driscoll. 

Let us allow the curtain to descend to slow 
music, and after a brief pause rise on some of 
our other charafters. Behold now the fifty thou- 
sand respeftable, well-intentioned, tolerably ig- 
norant citizens who vote but are too busy with 
their own affairs to pay attention to politics, and 
as a consequence generally vote the party ticket 
or vote to please a friend. As a sample take Mr. 
John Baker, amiable and well-meaning physi- 
cian, a practical philanthropist and an intelligent 
student of science by virtue of his adlive daily 
professional labors. For a week before election 
he is apt to have a distressing, soul-haunting 
consciousness that a City Government is shortly 
to be chosen and that he must, as a free-born 
and virtue-loving citizen, vote for somebody. 
He remembers that during the year there has 
been more or less agitation in the newspapers 
concerning this or that individual connedled 
with the aldermanic ofSce, but he has forgotten 
names and is all at sea as to who is who or 
[ ^05 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

what is what. Two days before eledion he re- 
ceives and puts aside a circular containing a Hst 
of the most desirable candidates, as indicated 
by the Reform Society, intending to peruse it, 
but he is called from home on one evening by 
professional demands, and on the other by 
tickets for the theatre, so elediion morning ar- 
rives without his having looked at it. He for- 
gets that it is election day, and is reminded of 
the fad while on his way to visit his patients 
by noticing that many of his acquaintances seem 
to be walking in the wrong diredion. He turns 
also at the spur of memory, and mournfully 
realizes that he has left the list at home. To re- 
turn would spoil his professional day, so he 
proceeds to the polls, and, in the hope of wise 
enlightenment, joins the first sagacious friend 
he encounters. It happens, perhaps, to be 
Dowling. 

"Ah," says Dr. Baker, genially, "you *re 
just the man to tell me whom to vote for. One 
vote does n't count for much, but I like to do 
my duty as an American citizen." 

"It 's a pretty poor list," says Dowling, pa- 
thetically, drawing a paper from his pocket. "I 
believe, however, in accomplishing the best pos- 
[ 206 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

sible results under existing circumstances. If I 
thought the Reform candidates could be eleded, 
I would vote for them and for them only; but 
it 's equally important that the very worst men 
should be kept out. I am going to vote for the 
Reform candidates and for Lynch, Dolan, Bird, 
and Driscoll. They 're capable and they have 
had experience. If they steal, they '11 steal judi- 
ciously and that is something. Some of those 
other fellows would steal the lamp-posts and 
hydrants if they got the chance." 

"All right," says Dr. Baker. "I '11 take your 
word for it. Let me write those names down. I 
suppose that some day or other we shall get a 
decent City Government. I admit that I don't 
give as much consideration to such matters as 
I ought, but the days are only twenty-four 
hours long." 

Then from the same company there is Mr. 
David Jones, hay and grain dealer, honest and 
a diligent, reputable business man. He harbors 
the amiable delusion that the free-born Ameri- 
can citizen in the exercise of the suffrage has 
intuitive knowledge as to whom to vote for, and 
that in the long run the choice of the sovereign 
people is wise and satisfactory. He is ready to 
[ 207 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

admit that political considerations should not 
control seledlion for municipal office, but he 
has a latent distrust of reformers as aristocratic 
self-seekers or enemies of popular government. 
For instance, the idea that he or any other 
American citizen of ordinary education and 
good moral character is not fit to serve on the 
school committee offisnds his patriotism. 

"What 's the matter with Lynch, anyway ?" 
he asks on his way to the polls. "I see some 
of his political enemies are attacking him in the 
press. If he were crooked, some one would have 
found it out in ten years. I met him once and 
he talked well. He has no frills round his neck." 

"Nor wheels in his head," answers a fellow- 
patriot, who wishes to get a street developed 
and has put his case in Lynch's hands. 

"He shall have my vote," says the hay and 
grain dealer. 

As for the twenty-five thousand hide-bound 
partisans, I will state to begin with, my opti- 
mistic correspondent, that if this drama were 
concerned with any eledion but a city eledion, 
their number would be larger. But these make 
up in unswerving fixity of purpose for any di- 
minution of their forces due to municipal con- 
[ 208 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

siderations. They are content to have their 
thinking done for them in advance by a packed 
caucus, and they go to the polls snorting like 
war-horses and eager to vindicate by their bal- 
lots the party choice of candidates, or meekly 
and reverently prepared to make a criss-cross 
after every R or D, according to their faith, 
with the fatuous fealty of sheep. Bigotry and 
suspicions, ignorance and easy-going willingness 
to be led, keep their phalanx steady and a con- 
stant old guard for the protection of comedians 
and villains. 

In another corner of the stage stand the ten 
thousand superior, self-centred souls who ne- 
gledl to vote and despise politics — the mixed 
corps of pessimists, impractical dreamers, care- 
less idlers, and hyper-cultured world-disdainers, 
who hold aloof, from one motive or another, 
from contad: with common life and a share in 
its responsibilities — some on the plea that uni- 
versal suffrage is a folly or a failure, some that 
earth is but a vale of travail which concerns 
little the wise or righteous thinker, some from 
sheer butterfly or stupid idleness. Were they 
to vote they would help to offset that no less 
large body of suffragists — the aCtive enemies of 
[ 209 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

order, the hoodlum, tobacco-spitting, woman- 
insulting, rum-drinking ruffian brigade. There 
are only left the ten thousand conscientious 
citizens, real patriots — a corporal's guard, amid 
the general optimistic sweep toward the polls. 
These mark their crosses with care against the 
names of the honest men and perhaps some of 
the pretty honest, only to read in the newspa- 
pers next morning that the big four have been 
returned to power and that the confidence of 
the plain and sovereign people in the disinter- 
ested condud: of their public servants has again 
been demonstrated. 

"Ho, ho, ho," laugh the low comedians. 
"Mum 's the word." The faces of the big four 
are wreathed in self-congratulatory smiles. At 
the homes of Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan, 
those experienced individuals without occupa- 
tion, there are cakes and ale. It is a mistake to 
assume that because a citizen is an Alderman 
he is not human and amiably domestic in his 
tastes. Jeremiah loves the little Dolans and is 
no less fond of riding his children on his leg 
than Thomas Barnstable, or any of the leading 
villains. When their father looks happy in the 
late autumn, the children know that their 
[ 2IO ] 



To a Political Optimist 

Christmas stockings will be full. Jeremiah is at 
peace with all the world and is ready to sit with 
slicked hair for his photograph, from which a 
steel (or is it steal ?) engraving will shortly be 
prepared for the new City Government year- 
book, superscribed : "Jeremiah Dolan, Chair- 
man of the Board of Aldermen." A framed en- 
largement of this will hang on one side of the 
fire-place, and an embroidered motto, "God 
Bless Our Home," on the other, and all will be 
well with the Dolans for another twelve months. 
In his own home Jeremiah is a man of few 
words on public matters. Not unnaturally his 
children believe him to be of the salt of the 
earth, and he lets it go at that, attending strid:- 
ly to business without seeking to defend him- 
self in the bosom of his family from the dia- 
tribes of reformers. Still, it is reasonable to as- 
sume that, under the fillip of the large majority 
rolled up in his favor, he would be liable to 
give vent to his sense of humor so far as to re- 
fer in the presence of his wife and children to 
the young man who was willing to become an 
Alderman while waiting to be Senator, as a T. 
Willy. 

If you have read "The Hon. Peter Stirling," 

[211 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

you will remember that the hero rose to politi- 
cal stature largely by means of attending to the 
needs of the' distrid, befriending the poor and 
the helpless and having a friendly, encouraging 
word for his constituents, high or low. The 
American public welcomed the book because it 
was glad to see the boss vindicated by these 
human qualities, and to think that there was a 
saving grace of unselfish service in the compo- 
sition of the average successful politician. It 
would be unjust to the big four were I not to 
acknowledge that they have been shrewd or hu- 
man enough to pursue in some measure this 
affable policy, and that the neighborhood and 
the distrid in which they live recognize them 
as hustlers to obtain office, privileges, and jobs 
for the humble citizen wishing to be employed 
by or to sell something to the City Govern- 
ment. To this constituency the comparatively 
small tax levied seems all in the day's work, a 
natural incident of the principle that when a 
man does something, he ought to be paid for 
it. To them the distindion that public service 
is a trust which has no right to pecuniary profit 
beyond the salary attached, and a reasonable 
amount of stationery, seems to savor of the 

[ 212 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

millennium and to suggest a lack of pradical in- 
telligence on the part of its advocates. They 
pay the lawyer and the dodor ; why not the 
Alderman ? 



[ 213 ] 




To A Political Optimist, 
III. 

AM reminded by Josephine that I 
seem to be getting into the dumps, 
which does not befit one who claims 
to be an optimistic philosopher. The 
drama just set before you is not, I admit, en- 
couraging as a national exhibit, and I can im- 
agine that you are already impatient to retort 
that the municipal stage is no fair criterion of 
public life in this country. I can hear you as- 
sert, with that confident air of national righteous- 
ness peculiar to the class of blind patriots to 
which you belong, that the leading politicians 
of the nation disdain to soil their hands by con- 
tadl with city politics. Yet there I take issue with 
you squarely, not as to the fad but as to the 
truth of the lofty postulate seething in your 
mind that the higher planes of political adivity 
are free from the venal and debasing character- 
istics of municipal public service — from the in- 
fluence of the money power operating on a low 
public standard of honesty. 

Most of us — even philosophers like myself 
— try to cling to the fine theory that the legisla- 

[ 2H ] 



To a Political Optimist 

tors of the country represent the best morals 
and brains of the community, and that the men 
eleded to public office in the councils of the 
land have been put forward as being peculiarly 
fitted to interpret and provide for our needs, 
by force of their predominant individual virtues 
and abilities. Most of us appreciate in our se- 
cret souls that this theory is not lived up to, 
and is available only for Fourth of July or 
other rhetorical purposes. Yet we dislike to dis- 
miss the ideal as unattainable, even though we 
know that adlual pradice is remote from it; and 
patriots still, we go on asserting that this is our 
method of choice, vaguely hoping, like the well- 
intentioned but careless voter, that some day 
we shall get a decent government, municipal, 
state, national — that is decent from the stand- 
point of our democratic ideal. And there is an- 
other theory, part and parcel of the other, 
which we try to cling to at the same time, that 
our public representatives, though the obviously 
ornamental and fine specimens of their several 
constituencies, are after all only every-day 
Americans with whom a host of citizens could 
change places without disparagement to either. 
In other words, that our theory of government is 

[^15] 



To a Political Optimist 

government by the average, and that the aver- 
age is remarkably high. This comfortable view 
induces many like yourself to wrap themselves 
round with the American flag and smile at des- 
tiny, sure that everything will result well with 
us sooner or later, and impatient of criticism or 
doubts. As a people we delight in patting our- 
selves on the back and dismissing our worries 
as mere flea-bites. The hard cider of our patriot- 
ism gets readily into the brain and causes us to 
deny fiercely or serenely, according to our dis- 
positions, that anything serious is the matter. 

Yet whatever Fourth of July orators may say 
to the contrary, the fad remains that the sorry 
taint of bargain and sale, of holding up on the 
political highway and pacification by bribery in 
one form or another, permeates to-day the whole 
of our political system from the lowest stratum 
of municipal public life to the councils which 
make Presidents and United States Senators. To 
be sure, the Alderman in his capacity of low co- 
median didlating terms to corporations seeking 
civic privileges is the most unblushing, and hence 
the most obviously flagrant case; but it is well 
recognized by all who are brought in contadl with 
legislative bodies of any sort in the country that 
[1.6] 



To a Political Optimist 

either diredily or indlredlly the machinery of pub- 
lic life is controlled by aggregations of capital 
working on the hungry, easy-going, or readily 
flattered susceptibilities of a considerable per- 
centage of the members. Certainly our national 
and state assemblies contain many high-minded, 
honest, intellectually capable men, but they con- 
tain as many more who are either dishonest or 
are so ignorant and easily cajoled that they per- 
mit themselves to be the tools of leading villains. 
Those cognizant of what goes on behind the 
scenes on the political stage would perhaps deny 
that such men as our friend Thomas Barnstable 
or his agent, Dowling, attempt to didate nomi- 
nations to either branch of the legislature on the 
tacit understanding that a member thus sup- 
ported is to advocate or vote for their measures, 
and by their denial they might deceive a real 
simon-pure philosopher. But this philosopher 
knows better, and so do you, my optimistic 
friend. It is the fashion, I am aware, among con- 
servative people, lawyers looking for employ- 
ment, bankers and solid men of affairs, to put 
the finger on the lips when this evil is broached 
and whisper, " Hush ! " They admit confiden- 
tially the truth of it, but they say "Hush ! 

[ 217 ] 



T^o a Political Optimist 

What 's the use of stirring things up ? It can't 
do any good and it makes the public discon- 
tented. It excites the populists." So there is per- 
petual mystery and the game goes on. Men who 
wish things good or bad come reludantly or will- 
ingly to the conclusion that the only way to get 
them is by paying for them. Not all pay cash. 
Some obtain that which they desire by working 
on the weaknesses of legislators; following them 
into banks where they borrow money, getting 
people who hold them in their employ or give 
them business to interfere, asking influential 
friends to press them. Every railroad corpora- 
tion in the country has agents to look after its 
affairs before the legislature of the State through 
which it operates, and what some of those agents 
have said and done in order to avert molestation 
would, if published, be among the most interest- 
ing memoirs ever written. Who doubts that elec- 
tions to the United States Senate and House of 
Representatives are constantly secured by the 
use of money among those who have the power 
to bestow nominations and influence votes ? It 
is notorious, yet to prove it would be no less dif- 
ficult than to prove that Peter Lynch, Alderman 
for ten years without occupation, has received 

[218] 



To a Political Optimist 

bribes from his fellow-citizens. How are the vast 
sums of money levied on rich men to secure the 
success of a political party in a Presidential cam- 
paign expended ? For stationery, postage stamps, 
and campaign documents ? For torch-light pro- 
cessions, rallies, and buttons ? Some of it, cer- 
tainly. The unwritten inside history of the po- 
litical progress of many of the favorite sons of 
the nation during the last forty years would 
make the scale of public honor kick the beam 
though it were weighted with the cherry-tree and 
hatchet of George Washington. In one of our 
cities where a deputation of city officials attended 
the funeral of a hero of the late war with Spain, 
there is a record of four hundred dollars spent 
for ice-cream. Presumably this was a transcript 
of petty thievery inartistically audited. But there 
are no auditings of the real use of the thousands 
of dollars contributed to keep a party in power 
or to secure the triumph of a politically ambi- 
tious millionaire. 

\Note. — Josephine, who had been sitting lost in 
thought since the conclusion of the drama, and 
who is fond of problem plays, inquired at this 
point whether I consider the low comedians or 
[ 219 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

the leading villains the most to blame for the 
existing state of things. 

" It is a pertinent question, Josephine, and one 
not easily answered. What Is your view of the 
matter?" 

"I suppose," she answered, "as you have 
termed the bribers the leading villains, they are 
the worst. And I do think that the temptation 
must be very great among the class of men who 
are without fine sensibilities to let themselves be- 
come the tools of rich and powerful people, who, 
as you have indicated, can help them immensely 
in return for a vote. It is astonishing that those 
in the community who are educated, well-to-do 
citizens, should commit such sins against decency 
and patriotism." 

"Yes, It seems astonishing, but their plea is 
pathetic, as I have already stated, and somewhat 
plausible. Suppose for a minute that I am 
Thomas Barnstable defending himself and see 
how eloquent I can be. 'What would you have 
me do. Madam ? I am an honest man and my 
directors are honest men ; the bills we ask for are 
always just and reasonable. I have never In my 
life approached a legislator with an Improper 
offer, nor have I used dired; or indlred: bribery 
[ 220 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

so long as it was absolutely possible to avoid 
doing so. But when a gang of cheap and cun- 
ning tricksters block the passage of my corpora- 
tion's measures, and will not let them become 
law until we have been bled, I yield as a last re- 
sort. We are at their mercy. It is a detestable 
thing to do, I admit, but it is necessary if we are 
to remain in business. There is no alternative. 
The responsibility is on the dishonest and in- 
capable men whom the American public eleds 
to office, and who under the specious plea of pro- 
tecting the rights of the plain people levy black- 
mail on corporate interests. Corporations do not 
wish to bribe, but they are forced to do so in 
self-defence.' There ! Is not that a tear-compel- 
ling statement?" 

" I can see your side," said Josephine. 

"Pardon me," I interrupted. "It is Mr. Barn- 
stable's side, not mine. I am not a capitalist, only 
a philosopher." 

"Well, his side then; and I feel sorry for him 
in spite of the weakness of his case. Only his 
argument does not explain the others. I should 
not suppose that men like Mr. Prendergast could 
truthfully declare that all the legislation they ask 
for is just and reasonable." 

[ 221 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

"Precisely. Yet they buy their desires in the 
open market from the free-born representatives 
of the people. If any one states so at the time he 
is hushed up, if possible; if not, there is an in- 
vestigation, nothing is proved, and the integrity 
of the legislative body is vindicated. I can shed 
a tear on behalf of men like Mr. Barnstable, a 
crocodile tear, yet still a tear. But there is the 
larger army of hard-headed, dollar-hunting, prac- 
tical capitalists, who are not forming corpora- 
tions for their health, so to speak, to be reck- 
oned with. My eloquence is palsied by them. 
They would tell you that they were obliged to 
bribe, but they do not waste much time in re- 
sistance or remorse. They seem to regard the 
evil as a national custom, unfortunate and ex- 
pensive, but not altogether inconvenient. Con- 
fidentially over a cigar they will assure you that 
the French, the Spanish, the Turks, and the 
Chinese are infinitely worse and that this is 
merely a passing phase of democracy, whatever 
that may mean." 

"Dreadful," said Josephine. "And then there 
are the people with money who aid and abet 
their own nominations for Congress. I think I 
could mention some of them." 

[ 222 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

"Well, you mustn't. It might hurt their 
feelings, for they may not know exadlly what 
was done except in a general way. After all is 
over they ask ' how much ? ' draw a check and 
make few inquiries. That is the genteel way. 
But in some states it is not necessary or politic 
to be genteel. The principle is the same, but 
the process is less subtle and aristocratic. But 
have n't you a word of extenuation to offer on 
behalf of the low comedians .f* Think of Jere- 
miah Dolan and the little Dolans." 

"I suppose he also would say it was n't true," 
said Josephine. 

"Oh, yes. ' Lady, there is n't a word of truth 
in the whole story. Some one 's been stuffing 
you.'" 

"They must be dreadfully tempted, poor 
wretches." 

"'Lady, it's all make-believe. But it's one 
thing to talk and another to sit still and have a 
fellow whisper in your ear that you have only 
to vote his way to get five thousand in clean 
bills and no questions asked. When a man has 
a mortgage on his house to pay, five thousand 
would come in handy. I 'm only supposing, 
Lady, and no one can prove I took a cent.'" 
[ 223 ] 



'To a Political Optimist 

" Fred," said Josephine, after a solemn pause, 
"the dreadful thought has just occurred to me 
that the American people may not be — are not 
stridlly honest." 

"Sh!" I shouted eagerly and seizing a tea 
table-cloth I threw it over her head and stayed 
her speech. 

"My dear, do you realize what you are say- 
ing?" 

"Do you realize that you are tumbling my 
hair?" 

I paid no heed to this unimportant interjec- 
tion, but said, "If any true patriot were to hear 
you make such an accusation you would sub- 
jed: yourself and me to some dreadful punish- 
ment, such as happened to Dreyfus, or * The 
Man Without a Country.' Not honest ? By the 
shades of George Washington, what are you 
thinking of? Why, one of the chief reasons of 
our superiority to all the other nations of the 
world is because of our honesty — our immu- 
nity from the low moral standards of effete, 
frivolous despotisms and unenlightened masses 
who are without the blessings of freedom. Not 
stridily honest ? Josephine, your lack of tadl, if 
nothing else, is positively audacious. Do you 
[ 224 ] 



To a P olitic al Optimist 

expe6t me to break this cruel piece of news to 
the optimistic patriot to whom this letter is ad- 
dressed ?" 

"I think you are silly," said my wife, freeing 
herself from the tea table-cloth and trying to 
compose her slightly disordered tresses. " I only 
thought aloud, and I said merely what you 
would have said sooner or later in more phil- 
osophical terms. I saw that you were tempted 
by the fear of not seeming a patriot to dilly- 
dally with the situation and avoid expressing 
yourself in perspicuous language. T-h-i-e-f 
spells thief; b-r-i-b-e-r-y spells bribery. I don't 
know much about politics, and I 'm not a phi- 
losopher, but I understand the meaning of ev- 
ery-day English, and I should say that we were 
not even pretty honest. There ! Those are my 
opinions, and I think you will save time if you 
send them in your letter instead of beating about 
the bush for extenuating circumstances. If you 
don't, I shall — for really, Fred, it 's too simple 
a proposition. And as for the blame, it 's six of 
one and half a dozen of the other." 

"Josephine, Josephine," I murmured, "there 
goes my last chance of being sent to the Phi- 
lippines, in my capacity as a philosopher, to 

[ 225 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

study whether the people of those islands are 
fit for representative government."] 

You have read what Josephine says, my op- 
timistic friend. She has stated that she would 
write to you her summing up of the whole mat- 
ter if I did not, so I have inserted her deduc- 
tion in all its crudity. She declares the trouble 
to be that the American people are dishonest. Of 
course, I cannot expe6l you to agree with any 
such conclusion, and I must admit that the bold- 
ness of the accusation is a shock to my own sen- 
sibilities as a patriot. Of course, Josephine is a 
woman and does not understand much about 
politics and ways and means, and it is notori- 
ous that women jump at conclusions instead of 
approaching them logically and in a dignified 
manner. But it is also said that their sudden 
conclusions are apt to be right. Dishonest ? 
Dear me, what a dreadful suggestion. I really 
think that she went a little too far. And yet I 
am forced to agree that appearances are very 
much against us, and that if we hope to lead the 
world in righteousness and progress we must, to 
recur to political phraseology, mend our moral 
fences. I do not indulge in meteoric flights, like 
[ 226 ] 



To a Political Optimist 
Josephine. Let us argue the matter out sober- 

ly- 

You and I, as men of the world, will agree 
that if the American people prefer or find it 
more serviceable to cherish bribery as a federal \J 
institution, no one will interfere. The fa6l that 
it is ethically wrong is interesting to real phi- 
losophers and to the clergy, but bribery will con- 
tinue to flourish like a bay-tree if it is the sort 
of thing which the American people like. Now, 
to all outward appearances they find it, if not 
grateful and comforting, at least endurable and 
convenient. Certainly, except among the class 
of people whom you would be apt to stigmatize 
as "holier than thous," there is comparatively 
little interest taken in the question. The mass 
of the community seek refuge behind the agree- 
able fidlion that the abuse does n't exist or ex- 
ists only in such degree as to be unimportant. 
Many of these people know that this is false, 
but they will not admit that they think so in 
order not to make such doings familiar, just as 
their custom is to speak of legs as lower limbs 
in order not to bring a blush to the cheek of 
the young person. For thorough-going hypoc- 
risy — often unconscious, but still hypocrisy — 

[ 227 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

no one can equal a certain kind of American. 
It is so much easier in this world, where patting 
on the back is the touch-stone of preferment 
and popularity, to think that everything is as 
serene as the surface indicates, though you are 
secretly sure that it is not. How much more 
convenient to be able to say truthfully, "I have 
no knowledge of the fa6ls, so don't bother me," 
than to be constantly wagging the head and en- 
tertaining doubts concerning the purity of one's 
fellow-citizens, and so making enemies. 

As I have indicated earlier in this letter, the 
ideal is dear to our patriotic sensibilities that we 
are governed by average opinion, and that the 
average is peculiarly high. The fastidious citi- 
zen in this country has been and still is fond 
of the taunt that men of upright character and 
fine instindls — what he calls gentlemen — will 
not enter public life, for the reason that they 
will not eat dirt. The reply has been that the 
real bugaboo of the fastidious citizen is one of 
manners, and that in the essentials of character, 
in strong moral purpose and solid worth, the 
average American voter is the peer of any aris- 
tocracy. The issue becomes really one of fad:, 
and mere solemn assertion will not serve as evi- 
[ 2^8 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

dence beyond a certain point. If the majority 
prefer dishonesty, the power is in their hands 
to perpetuate the system ; but beheving as you 
and I do that the majority at heart is honest, how 
are we to explain the continued existence of the 
evil ? How as patriots shall we reconcile the 
perpetuation in power of the low comedians, 
Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan, except on 
the theory that it is the will of the majority 
that they should continue to serve the people ? 
This is not a question of kid gloves, swallow- 
tailed coats, and manners, but an indidlment re- 
fledling on the moral charad:er and solid worth 
of the nation. How are we to explain it ? What 
are we to say ? Can we continue to declare that 
we are the most honest and aspiring people in 
the world and expedt that portion of the world 
which has any sense of humor not to smile ? 
Are we, who have been accustomed to boast of 
our spotless integrity as a people, ready to fall 
back on and console ourselves with the boast, 
which does duty nowadays on lenient lips, that 
we are as honest as any of the nations of Eu- 
rope except, possibly, England ? That is an in- 
dired form of patriotic negation under the sha- 
dow of which low comedians and leading vil- 
[ 229 ] 



1^0 a Political Optimist 

lains could ply their trade comparatively unmo- 
lested. 

As a philosopher, who is not a real philoso- 
pher, I find this charge of Josephine's a difficult 
nut to crack, and I commend it respedfully to 
your attention to mull over at your leisure, trust- 
ing that it may temper the effulgence of your 
thoughts on Independence Day. Yet having had 
my say as a philosopher, let me as an optimist, 
willing to succor a fellow-optimist, add a few con- 
siderations indicating that the situation may not 
be so ultimately evil as the existing state of af- 
fairs and Josephine would have us believe. I write 
"may not be," because I am not altogether con- 
fident that my intelligence is not being cajoled 
by the natural cheeriness and buoyancy of my 
disposition. The sole question at issue is whether 
the majority of the American people are really 
content to have the money power of the country 
prey upon and be the prey of the lowest moral 
sense of the community. 

We have before us an everyday spedacle of 
eager aggregations of capital putting aside scru- 
ples as visionary and impradtical, and hence "un- 
American," in order to compass success, and at 
the other side of the counter the so-called repre- 
[ 230 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

sentatives of the people, solemn in their verbiage 
but susceptible to occult and disgraceful influ- 
ences. The two parties to the intercourse are dis- 
creet and business-like, and there is little risk 
of tangible disclosure. Prad:ically aloof from 
them, except for a few moments on eleftion day, 
stand the mass of American citizens busy with 
their own money-getting or problem-solving, 
and only too ready to believe that their repre- 
sentatives are admirable. They pause to vote as 
they pause to snatch a sandwich at a railroad sta- 
tion. "Five minutes for refreshments!" Five 
minutes for political obligations ! Individually 
there are thousands of stri6lly honest and noble- 
hearted men in the United States. Who doubts 
it ? The originality and strength of the American 
character is being constantly manifested in every 
field of life. But there we speak of individuals ; 
here we are concerned with majorities and the 
question of average morality and choice. For 
though we have an aspiring and enlightened van 
of citizens to point the way, you must remember 
that emigration and natural growth has given us 
tens of thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, and 
sometimes unscrupulous citizens, each of whose 
votes counts one. Perhaps it is true — and here 
[ 231 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

is my grain of consolation or hope — that the 
average voter is so easy-going, so long-suffering, 
so indisposed to find fault, so selfishly busy with 
his own affairs, so proud of our institutions and 
himself, so afraid of hurting other people's feel- 
ings, and so generally indifferent as to public 
matters, provided his own are serene, that he 
chooses to wink at bribery if it be not in plain 
view, and likes to deceive himself into believing 
that there is nothing wrong. The long and short 
of it seems to be that the average American citi- 
zen is a good fellow, and in his capacity of good 
fellow cannot afford to be too critical and partic- 
ular. He leaves that to the reformer, the literary 
'man, the dude, the college professor, the mug- 
wump, the philosopher, and other impradtical 
and un-American people. If so, what has become 
of that heritage of his forefathers, the stern Puri- 
tan conscience ? Swept away in the great wave 
of material progress which has centred all his 
energies on what he calls success, and given to 
the power of money a luring importance which 
is apt to make the scruples of the spirit seem 
unsubstantial and bothersome. An easy-going, 
trouble-detesting, self-absorbed democracy be- 
tween the buffers of rapacity and rascality. 
[ 232 ] 



To a Political Optimist 

A disagreeable conclusion for an optimist, yet 
less gloomy than the other alternative. This con- 
dition admits of cure, for it suggests a torpid 
conscience rather than deliberate acquiescence. 
It indicates that the representatives are betray- 
ing the people, and that there is room for hope 
that the people eventually may rise in their 
might and call them to account. If they do, I 
beg as a philosopher with humorous proclivities, 
to caution them against seizing the wrong pig 
by the ear. Let them fix the blame where it be- 
longs, and not hold the corporations and the 
money power wholly responsible. It may be pos- 
sible in time to abolish trusts and cause rich men 
sleepless nights in the crusading name of popu- 
lism, but that will avail little unless at the same 
time they go to the real root of the matter, and / 
quicken the average conscience and strengthen / 
the moral purpose of the plain people of the 
United States. There will be leading villains and 
low comedians so long as society permits, and so 
long as the conscience of democracy is torpid. 
The players in the drama are, after all, only the 
people themselves. Charles the First was be- 
headed because he betrayed the liberties of the 
people. Alas ! there is no such remedy for a 

[ '^ZZ ] 



To a Political Optimist 

corrupt democracy, for its heads are like those 
of Hydra, and it would be itself both the vidim 
and the executioner. 



r H B END 



D. B. Updike 

The Merrymount Press 

104 Chestnut Street 

Boston 



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